Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai Launching Grama Digi Vikasana, an initiative by the nonprofit Sikshana Foundation and the Rural Development & Panchayat Raj Department, with support from Dell Technologies.
Karnataka, outside of the major urban centers is largely rural with over 30,000 villages housing over 60% of the state population. Administratively a few villages are grouped under an administrative entity called Gram Panchayat (GP). There are 6,011 GPs in the state and a variety of services are made available at each of the GP. One such service is the availability of public library at each of these GPs. Libraries in the rural areas has a pivotal role by offering information dissemination among the public. The rural libraries can act as community centers to provide access to information. Meanwhile the pandemic has exposed the massive imbalance in access to digital information which has already impacted millions of children who have not gone to school for 18 months and were unable to attend online classes due to non-availability of internet and digital devices. In addition, most social programs are also being delivered digitally and access to digital devices for the underserved is very critical now. With the increased demand of tech enabled information access, the existing rural libraries can be enabled with the digital devices with tech enabled solutions allowing the students and the youth to access vast resources available online in a most effective and efficient way, thus accelerating the information flow amongst the community. Sikshana Foundation in collaboration with Rural Development and Panchayat Raj (RDPR) department is working towards upgrading the conventional libraries into digital libraries by equipping them with digital devices and internet connectivity.