BANGALORE, INIDA: There has always been the apprehension about how can E-learning help the masses in the rural part of the country, despite the 'digital leap' that India has made.

But the initiatives of Gandhigram Rural Institute, a provider in distance education and a deemed university in Tamil Nadu, shows how the possibility of E-learning can be utilised to reach out to the masses.

Gandhigram has created an E-learning programme for creating literacy campaign in the rural areas and it is a classic example of the effective reach of technology in helping towards the development of rural India.

An E-learning center is set up by the institute in every village, where the people are taught how to read and write by using visual and audio content.

Content are developed on various issues particularly faced by the villagers such as Panchayati Raj, right to information, human rights, self funding, sanitation, environment restoration, superstitions, etc.

“The criterion is to educate the rural masses on the basic knowledge and about the current happening around the globe,” said L. Raja, director, Gandhigram Rural Institute, while speaking to CyberMedia on the sidelines of the two-day knowledge conclave being held in Bangalore.

He said, people from various sectors such as media, educational organization, government organization etc are invited to conduct workshop through which we get information for generating the content.

The villagers so far have welcomed this initiative openly and are very excited about e-learning as the content in form of audio and visual are very appealing to them.

The idea to initiate such kind of e-learning campaign was generated to this institute by TCS’s literacy model.

This initiative was started by the institute five years ago and is funded by UGC.

The university so far has covered 100 villages and educated about forty to fifty thousand villagers.

This campaign shows the power of technology to transform the entire country in to a high knowledge base.

Here lies the answer to the question; of how effective is e-learning not only for higher education but also for increasing literacy rate and as well as rural development of the country.