New Delhi: From tribals of Adilabad district in Andhra Pradesh to villagers in Jodhpur and slum dwellers on the outskirts of Delhi, a silent computer literacy revolution is taking shape, courtesy the government, non-governmental organisations, and some Information Technology (IT) education institutes.

In Rajasthan, women have converted their 'Chakla' into a mouse pad for learning computers, while in Punjab, the 'jats' receive Dollars online from their NRI sons and chat freely through cyber cafes, which have sprung up all around their farms.

"With more and more applications like online reservation system, e-mail in local language and internet cafes reaching rural areas, it has become important that even illiterate villagers are trained in handling," says Dr Sugata Mitra, Head, Centre for Research in Cognitive Systems.

"While some efforts are going on in rural areas, much more needs to be done," says Dr Mitra, noting "there are millions of Indians, especially those in smaller towns and villages and in the lower income sections of the society who have been left out of the IT revolution sweeping the country".

"There is an urgent need to bridge that divide otherwise touts would take over, who would be cheating computer illiterates for small services like sending an e-mail or checking the reservation," warns Dr Mitra.

"The usage of Internet is becoming important in every aspect of life. While Indian IT industry has earned a name for itself all over, as far as basic computer literacy is concerned, just five per cent of the population is computer literate," says CyberMedia chief executive officer Pradeep Gupta.

"Over the last few years, NGOs have tried different computer literacy models - almost 50 of them are available. The best way to spread mass computer literacy would be to select around five models, which can be adapted to different environments and implement them," he says.

What we are talking of is 'functional computer literacy', says Dr Mitra, citing the example of cable TV revolution in India.

"There are over 60 million cable TV connections in India. The guys who set up the meters, slice the coaxial cables, make the connection to the house are not technical people. They don't know what they are going except that by joining various cables, the connection is on. Same is the case with Computers," says Dr Mitra.

Computer literacy can be achieved with minimal or no formal education, he says noting "500 million Indian children can achieve basic computer literacy over the next five years if the government spends $ 2 billion and puts 100,000 Internet connected PCs in schools and trains teachers in basic techniques. The cost of the project would be around $ 2 billion.

"Also, language is not going to be a problem in the near future... if rural India goes on internet, there will be an absolute flood of Indian-language content from people trying to sell computer education to them," he says.

Agrees P Rajendran, chief operating officer of National Institute Of Information Technology (NIIT), "We have come out with training packages in four languages besides English - Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi and Tamil. Every person who enrols for our program takes home a language software. This way language software starts proliferating."

Says Kiran Karnik, president, National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM), "Though we are constrained by literacy barrier in rural areas, the stress should be on functional computer literacy."

Also, increasing access to Internet terminals is more important than formal education. "Who cares if they know that a computer is called a computer and a mouse is called a mouse... the terminology is not as important as the metaphor," he says noting, "They should know its benefits and how to use it."

PTI