Ravi Shankar Prasad calls for at least one NIELIT Centre in each State

NEW DELHI: India's Electronics & Information technology and Law & Justice Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has inaugurated the NIELIT Bhawan, a new state of the art green building of the National Institute of Electronics and Information Technology (NIELIT) at Dwarka, New Delhi in the presence of  P. P. Chaudhary, MoS. Electronics & IT, Law & Justice among others.

In his keynote address, Prasad, “There is no aspect of human life which is untouched by advances in Information Technology and Electronics. NIELIT has endeavored to lead by example and is empowering youth through Skill Development and Capacity Building initiatives. In addition to Digital Literacy the demands for skilling in basic Cyber Security concepts has also increased manifold, and NIELIT is equitably poised to address this challenge. For effective implementation of skill development programmes including Government of India’s initiatives at PAN India level, he further said that NIELIT should strive to ensure that it has presence through at least one own Centre in each state.”

“We are working towards transforming India into a digitally empowered nation, and imparting digital literacy to the last miles of rural India holds the key here. The Common Services Centres (CSCs) have so far done a great job in this direction; our target is to provide training on digital literacy to 6 crore citizens, which will be certified by NIELIT. I appeal NIELIT as well as all concerned functionaries to take this project on a mission mode and contribute to the larger goal as envisaged by the Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. We would like to see all government services, both at central and state level, to be digitally available to the every citizen of this country.” addedPrasad.

Chaudhary congratulated NIELIT for institutionalizing the newly constructed NIELIT Bhawan and said, “The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) has also been delegated with the responsibility of promotion of Digital Transactions including Digital Payments. In this regard, there is a need for concerted efforts by all stakeholders for promotion of digital payments to move towards a less cash economy and NIELIT together with other organizations is also contributing towards this vision.”

Shri Parvesh Sahib Singh, Hon’ble Member of Parliament, West Delhi Lok Sabha constituency, Col. Devinder Sehrawat, Hon’ble MLA and a host of other dignitaries and senior officers from Government and MeitY were also present at the occasion.

NIELIT is a key part of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is engaged in Capacity Building and Skill Development of youth all over India. With the addition of a new campus NIELIT has added another feather in its cap. Incidentally, NIELIT has PAN India presence through 36 own Centres and about 9000 training partners.

In his address Shri Sanjiv Mittal, Joint Secretary, MeitY said, “NIELIT has developed expertise in development of quality course curriculum and many of these courses have also been aligned with the National Skills Qualifications Framework for greater employability and industry acceptance”.

Dr. Ashwini Kumar Sharma, Director General, NIELIT tracing the journey of construction of NIELIT Bhawan, which has been taken up with renewed vigor only recently, said, “To follow green practices NIELIT Bhawan has been equipped with Solar Panels on rooftop in support of New & Renewable Energy mission of the Government. The stupendous growth of NIELIT in the last 5 years has been possible due to proactive use of technology and process re-engineering initiatives.”

It is noteworthy that the foundation stone was laid in May 2015 and as such the construction of NIELIT Bhawan has been completed within a very short span of less than 2 years.

During inauguration, e-Contents of NIELIT Courses were also launched. Through e-Content NIELIT aims to widen its reach especially in those areas where there is shortage of training facilities. In continuation to the efforts made by NIELIT to facilitate stakeholders through its repertoire of Online facilities, an Online Accreditation Portal was also launched which would considerably reduce time and paper documentations for grant of accreditation to private training institutes under a time-tested PPP model. Besides, a new concept has also been introduced by NIELIT, whereby candidates shall now be awarded e-Certificate on completion of a single module. As NIELITs non-formal courses are targeted towards those candidates who are unable to join the main-stream university education system, issuance of module wise e-Certificates would further widen the scope for employment.

NIELIT is working in unison with its network of training partners in taking forward ‘Digital India’, ‘Make in India’, ‘Skill India’, towards development of an empowered society. The NIELIT Bhawan inaugurated today is another key link in the growing footsteps of NIELIT all over India. NIELIT in the last 5 years has registered a healthy growth in all spheres with revenue registering a jump of about 175%. NIELIT annually skills more than 7 lakh candidates and has institutionalized many new initiatives such as SMART Virtual Classroom for training in Electronic mode. NIELIT has launched 70 Apps for Android based Smart Phones on various topics of CCC (Course on Computer Concepts) course in 11 languages and 51 Skill Oriented courses of NIELIT have been aligned with NSQF at different levels.

NIELIT has also established Model Career Centres under the National Career Service Scheme of Government of India which organizes Job Fairs to promote employability among youth. Recently, it has also established a Study Centre at Baramulla, J&K jointly with Indian Army to mainstream local youth in the region through skill development programmes.

At NIELIT, internal capacities are being augmented through training of Master Trainers in niche areas such as Mobile Application Development, Cloud Computing, IoT, e-Waste, Cyber Security, Mobile Handset Design, etc. in synergy with industry leaders like Amazon, Google, Intel, Microsoft, etc. for skilling and empowerment of youth especially in rural India. Besides, NIELIT in collaboration with CAIT has been organising workshops and DigiDhan camps to onboard self organised small/ medium businesses/ traders on Digital Payment initiatives across India.