The Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, had said last year India is poised to be a trillion-dollar digital economy and could support 60-65 million digitally-enabled jobs by 2025-26.
Chandrasekhar said this, quoting data from a report by the Ministry of Electronics and IT, titled ‘India’s Trillion-Dollar Digital Opportunity.’ As per the report, “Successful realisation of India’s digital vision can unlock significant economic value, in the range of $800 billion to up to $1 trillion, up from about $200 billion today, and sustain 60 million to 65 million digital-economy jobs by 2025.”
Recent data from the Multiple Indicator Survey (MIS) report of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) does not really back up this ‘digital vision.’ The survey suggests that Indian youth lack basic information and communication technology (ICT) skills.
The NSSO survey, which was conducted in 2020-21 with an overall sample size of over 11 lakh respondents across the country by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), suggests that only 31.1 percent of Indian men aged between 15-29 years know how to send emails with attachment.
Further, only 45.7 percent know how to use copy and paste and just 15.3 percent know how to connect or install new devices.
In the same age group, ICT knowledge is even lesser in women. Only 22.1 percent know how to send emails with attachments, 32.7 percent know how to use copy and paste and only 10 percent know how to connect and install new devices.
The study asked participants to self-report whether they could execute nine tasks on a computer in order to gauge their ICT skills. The number of respondents who fell within this age range was not disclosed in the report.
For this, the respondents were asked nine questions, and in all these nine parameters Indian men and women aged between 15-29 years did not succeed above 48 percent.
Why are Indian youth lacking basic ICT skills?
“Indian youth lacking basic ICT skills can be attributed to the lack of operating computers in government secondary schools and higher secondary schools in India. Further, in many cases the teachers in government schools also lack the computer skills to teach the students,” a government school teacher from Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh told CNBC-TV18.com on the condition of anonymity.
Data in the Unified District Information System for Education by the Ministry of Education for 2020-2021 (also the range in which the NSSO survey was conducted) suggests that the total enrolment in 2020-21 from primary to higher secondary levels of school education was a little over 25.38 crore.
The total number of schools in India stood at over 15 lakh in 2020-2021, and further, computers were only available in 41.3 percent of schools in 2020-21 (this was at 38.5 percent of schools in 2019-20). When it comes to the internet, it was available in 24.5 percent of schools in 2020-21, and only in 22.3 percent of schools in 2019-20.
When it comes to functionality, only 39.88 percent of schools in India in 2020-2021 had functional computers and an even lower 24.51 percent had internet facilities.
The latest data of UDISE is from 2021-2022, which states that seven lakh, or 47.5 percent, of schools have computer facilities, and in this 45.8 percent have functional computer facilities and only 33.9 percent schools have internet facilities.
Notably, out of over 10 lakh government schools in India, five lakh, or 24.2 percent, have internet facilities. In 2020-2021, functional internet facility and functional computer facility stood at 13.64 percent and 31.1 percent, respectively.
A TeamLease EdTech report, titled ‘Digital Transformation of the Teaching Community,’ released last year, mentioned that 31 percent of teachers are still not proficient in digital tools.
Region-wise disparity
The NSSO data also revealed that Kerala came in first place for each of the nine ICT metrics examined by the survey.
In Kerala, almost 73 percent of men aged 15-29 years claimed to be able to send emails with attachments, nearly 90 percent know how to copy and paste, 52.9 percent know how to connect and install devices and 40 percent know how to create digital presentations.
Among women, the number is nearly the same as in men.
In the South, the breakup of men and women in the same age bracket who could send an email with attachments was as follows: Tamil Nadu (56.9 percent male and 53.6 percent female); Karnataka (49.2 percent male and 40.4 percent female); Telangana (51.9 percent male and 38.6 percent female); and Andhra Pradesh (41.7 percent male and 29.9 percent female).
In terms of the same skill and age bracket, the states in the Hindi heartland — Uttar Pradesh (9.7 percent female and 18.5 percent male); Madhya Pradesh (18.8 percent male and 11.5 percent female); Chhattisgarh (21.7 percent male and 14.9 percent female); as well as a few states in the east and the Northeast — offered a dramatic contrast to the south.
This can also be attributed to the computer and internet facilities at schools. UDISE data from 2020-2021 states that 89.1 percent of schools in Kerala had internet facilities and 96.03 percent of schools had functional computer facilities. A similar trend is seen in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
Among the southern states, Telangana ranked the lowest with 37.5 percent of schools having functional computer facilities and 22.5 percent having internet facilities.
Meanwhile, in Uttar Pradesh only 20.17 percent of schools had functional computer facilities and 14.9 percent had internet facilities. A similar trend is seen in Madhya Pradesh as well. Chhattisgarh had 80.45 percent functional computer facilities but only 14.02 percent had internet facilities.
