Now, Kerala achieves 100 pc digital literacy
The statewide initiative, Digi Keralam, saw more than 2 lakh volunteers train over 21 lakh citizens, from rural residents to senior citizens
Abdulla Moulavi Bafakhi, a 105-year-old from Ashamannur in Ernakulam district, has discovered a new pastime in his advanced years — watching YouTube videos. Once unfamiliar with the digital world, he is now among the 15,221 senior citizens, aged between 91 and 105, who became digitally literate through the state government’s 'Digi Kerala' campaign.
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Moulavi’s digital journey
For someone who had lived most of his life in a world untouched by technology, the ability to connect, learn, and interact online has brought a fresh sense of companionship and joy.
"He had spent 35 years as a religious teacher and also served as an imam. Now, being able to listen to religious programmes on YouTube brings him immense joy. He has become adept at browsing YouTube, occasionally logs on to Facebook, and can even handle WhatsApp video calls from his great-granddaughter," says his son Faizal.
Moulavi’s digital journey also received a special moment of recognition when LSGD Minister M B Rajesh paid him a surprise visit. The minister personally handed him a smartphone, symbolising not just a gift but also the bridging of generations through technology. Today, Moulavi says he is happy to spend time with his “cyber companions,” a world that was otherwise unimaginable to him.
Smartphone sparks change
Sarasu 79, from Pullampara in Thiruvananthapuram, had been living a life weighed down by grief after losing her son to suicide. A folk singer and MGNREGA worker, she spent her days alone, struggling to cope with both emotional pain and financial hardship. Her name figured in the government’s list of households identified under the project for the eradication of extreme poverty, marking her as one of the most vulnerable.
Sarasu’s life took a remarkable positive turn once she learned to use a smartphone. What began as a small step into the digital world soon opened up new doors for her. Today, she runs her own YouTube channel where she shares her songs, reviving her love for folk music that had once been pushed aside by hardship. Beyond that, the device has become her bridge to family, she now speaks to her daughters, chats with her grandchildren, and reconnects with relatives through regular video calls.
Sarasu’s life took a remarkable positive turn once she learned to use a smartphone. What began as a small step into the digital world soon opened up new doors for her. File photo
"When the volunteers showed us how to take photos and watch videos on the phone, it felt like a big surprise. That’s how we started learning. I didn’t have a smartphone then, so I bought one for 5,000 rupees with the money I earned from MGNREGA. I don’t have a TV, so this is my thing now — I just swipe and watch everything. Later, I even started singing on YouTube," she says.
Yet, she continues to live alone in the house allotted to her under the LIFE Mission, part of the state’s extreme poverty eradication programme, making her a living example of how multiple government initiatives can converge in a single life story.
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Pullampara pilot project
The story of the digital literacy programme began in Pullampara, a gram panchayat in Thiruvananthapuram district, during the COVID-19 lockdown. Employment guarantee workers were anxious since they had no way of knowing whether their wages had been credited to their accounts. With only one nationalised bank in the area and unable to reach it during the lockdown they found themselves cut off. Most were unfamiliar with e-banking and lacked access to the required technology. That was when the panchayat began to wonder: what if we could get them digitally educated?
“The biggest hurdle we faced was the shortage of smartphones among locals and the poor network coverage in many areas. Still, the panchayat decided to move ahead, and it was through the efforts of MP John Brittas that mobile connectivity was eventually extended to those regions,” says Rajesh P V, the President of Pullampara panchayat.
The Digi Pullampara initiative was conceived locally and implemented as a community effort, with political leadership, officials and volunteers working in step to ensure every citizen could use basic digital applications in daily life.
Community-based training
Startup-built mobile application powered a house-to-house survey across 15 wards, covering 22,173 people in 4,386 families and identifying 3,917 individuals who lacked basic digital skills; of these, 617 were bedridden or otherwise untrainable, leaving 3,300 eligible for instruction. Volunteers — recruited through a “You Can Become a Trainer” WhatsApp challenge — were trained in leadership, survey methods and app use before they stepped into the field.
Training, branded e-Vidyarambham, followed modules validated by APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University and focused on three essentials: operating a smartphone, understanding new media, and using online banking and government services. Delivery was deliberately local and flexible with NSS units, engineering students and neighbourhood volunteers teaching in homes, at MGNREGS worksites and in public spaces, while adhering to COVID-19 protocols.
NSS units, engineering students and neighbourhood volunteers taught at homes, at MGNREGS worksites and in public spaces, while adhering to COVID-19 protocols. File photo
“The grandchildren in each household became the first instructors. Then came the volunteers, with NSS units from engineering colleges stepping in. There was enthusiasm all around. It felt like a campaign, reminiscent of the total literacy mission of the late eighties and early nineties,” added Rajesh.
Funding was tight, so refreshments and transport were met through small philanthropic contributions. Trainers spent extra time with older residents to overcome reluctance to learn. In the end, of the 3,300 who underwent training and evaluation, 3,174 passed — an overall pass rate of 96.18 percent. On 21 September 2022, Pullampara was officially declared Kerala’s first totally digitally literate gram panchayat.
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Launch of Digi Keralam
Pullampara’s proof of concept became the template for the state. The success there prompted the government to launch Digi Keralam, a statewide total digital literacy campaign under the Local Self Government Department. The objective was to extend basic digital literacy to every citizen in the 14-65 age group, using the same three-part method: survey to identify those who needed training, structured instruction using common modules, and rigorous, tiered evaluation. A dedicated mobile app and web portal kept the workflow uniform across local bodies.
Scale and decentralisation defined the expansion of the projects. Across 1,034 local self-governments, 2,57,048 volunteers were mobilised. They visited 83,45,879 households and surveyed 1,50,82,536 individuals to identify 21,88,398 trainees. Of these, 21,87,966 completed instructions, and 21,87,667 passed evaluation. Quality control was embedded: super-checks at district and state levels, retraining wherever failure rates crossed 10 percent, and third-party validation by the Department of Economics and Statistics before any final declaration.
The district-wise picture shows how thorough the coverage became. Alappuzha, Ernakulam, Kannur, Kasaragod, Kollam, Kottayam, Kozhikode, Palakkad, Pathanamthitta, Thiruvananthapuram, Thrissur and Wayanad all reached a full 100 percent among those trained and evaluated. Idukki concluded at 99.98 percent, and Malappuram at 99.89 percent — margins that underline the campaign’s near-total reach even in hilly and high-population districts.
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Looking ahead
The effort was also explicitly volunteer-driven. NSS units, Kudumbashree members, engineering students and neighbourhood groups formed the backbone of the survey and training operations, turning what might otherwise have been a top-down scheme into a locally owned campaign. In tangible terms, more than a quarter-million people gave their time to reach households, register trainees and shepherd them through teaching and testing.
Kerala will now make its formal declaration on 21 August 2025 at Central Stadium, Thiruvananthapuram: the state has achieved total digital literacy. That announcement closes the loop of a programme that began in a single panchayat during a crisis and, through documented planning and systematic verification, expanded to the entire state.
The Pullampara lesson is that universal digital literacy is not only achievable but also measurable when it is treated as a public task led by local governments and executed with community participation.
As the campaign readies for its ceremonial culmination, the programme documents point further ahead. The state’s next step, styled Digi Keralam 2.0, shifts the emphasis from basic use to deeper competence — AI literacy, cybersecurity, safe tech and fintech — building on the infrastructure and administrative systems already in place.
