The wheels of mission Digital India are rolling. On Tuesday (July 7) the National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT) held a cycle rally from Electronics Niketan (CGO Complex) to Harijan Basti, Mandir Marg to spread awareness about Digital India among the residents of Harijan Basti.

Nearly 50 officials of NIELIT, DeitY and representatives of the IT industry participated in the rally followed by an interactive session with the local residents on e-governance initiatives, digital literacy, swacch Bharat and make-in-India. The rally was led by Ashwini Sharma, MD, NIELIT.

Flagging off the cycle rally RS Sharma, secretary, DeitY, said “a strong base will enable us to take forward the Digital India Mission and build a knowledge economy. As such, it is imperative that we reach out to all corners and sections of society and educate them about digitization.”

The initiative was to make access to technology and governance an extremely easy process. Ashwini Sharma said that “it is our humble endeavour through the cycle rally to move beyond religion, caste, class to spread awareness about the various components of Digital India, especially to the underprivileged sections of society”.

As part of Digital India campaign, NIELIT has set an ambitious target of training 55 lakh students in ICT for jobs, ESDM and Digital Marketing courses in the coming 4-5 years.

NIELIT, a body with the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Ministry of Communications & IT, has trained over 20 lakh students in the last two decades.

It’s activities are undertaken in 31 NIELIT centres besides a network of about 900 accredited training partners and nearly 6000 facilitation centres. More than 9 lakh candidates have been skilled by NIELIT in 2013-14. The figure was 4 lakh in 2012-13.  Due to high quality of standards, many universities have accorded recognition to NIELIT’s non-formal courses, for lateral entry to formal courses, such as MCA.

The government body is engaged in capacity building and skilling in the areas of IT, electronics, communication technologies, hardware, cyber law, cyber security, IPR, GIS, cloud computing, ESDM and e-governance for the last two decades. The website is www.nielit.gov.in.