After a marathon 2,500-km tour through 31 districts of Telangana, the Digithon Digital Yatra concluded in the city on Friday with the participants claiming that they have made over one lakh people digitally literate in the State.
“We are staring at a scary scenario where all transactions are becoming digital while people in the rural areas are not aware of the financial digital tools. This gap in digital literacy would lead to the rise of middlemen. We wanted to prevent that. This yatra was aimed at changing the ground reality by educating at least one person per family,” informed Konatham Dileep, Director, Digital Media, Telangana.
“At the end of the training programme, the digitally literate person is expected to successfully make a digital transaction and also be able to send an email,” informed Mr. Konatham. Tea shop owners, hoteliers, shopkeepers, students and petty traders were among the large number of users who were educated about the digital financial tools.
Along with digital financial literacy, the reach-out programme helped push State’s own financial tool– T-Wallet, informed Sundeep Makthala of Telangana Information Technology Association. More than 95,000 people have downloaded T-Wallet with Adilabad recording the highest number of users.
This is in sharp contrast to a study by National Payments Corporation of India about BHIM app revealing that lack of awareness and a less-than-perfect user experience led to rural users either deleting the application or being inactive.
