As of April 2013, 33.1 lakh families (33,10,280) from seven districts of Kerala have been provided computer education with 24.63 million families (24,63,094) trained through Akshaya centres set up by the government since 2002 and 8.57 lakh families (8,57,186) trained through other sources, the Akshaya State Project Office has said in response to the RTI filed by Medianama.
According to their website, Project Akshaya was started as a pilot project in the district of Malappuram on November 18, 2002 to make at least one member in each of 64 lakh families of Kerala, an e-literate. As per the website, this project was supposed to unfold in three phases with basic skill in computer operations and the knowledge of using the Internet being imparted to them in Phase I, however the organization hasn’t disclosed any specific details of Phase II & III on their website. It seems that either their website has not been updated or wrong data is being presented to public viewing on their website.
The website also claims that 100% e-literacy has been achieved in eight districts during Phase I of the project. However, according to the RTI response received, only Malappuram has achieved 100% e-literacy during Phase I while districts of Kannur, Kozhikode, Kasargod and Kollam have achieved 100% e-literacy during Phase II, which sum up to a total of five districts and not eight districts as claimed by the website. Eranakulam and Thrissur have achieved only 85% and 89% e-literacy during Phase II of the project.
The RTI response also says that a detailed survey of e-literacy has not been conducted in the districts of Thiruvananthapuram, Pathanamthitta, Alappuzha, Kottaya, Idukki, Palakkad and Wayanad, although Akshaya centres and sub-centres have been set up in these districts as well. A total of 1,984 Akshaya centres have been set up in Kerala until now, with each centre covering 2,000 households.
Although the RTI response says that 30.8 lakh families have been trained through the Akshaya Project, when we calculated, it came up to only 24.63 lakh families (2,463,094).
Note: Only person per family is trained at the Akshaya Centre
Some observations:
- Among the surveyed districts, Malappuram has the highest number of people trained through Akshaya Project with a total of 6.61 lakh e-literates (6,60,653), of which 5.98 lakh people (5,97,598) were trained through Akshaya centres and 63,055 people were trained through other sources.
- Among the surveyed districts, Malappuram district has the highest number of e-literates trained through Akshaya centres while Kollam district has the highest number of e-literates trained through other sources.
- Palakkad has the the highest number of Akshaya centres in the state with 216 Akshaya centres and 5 sub-centres while Wayanad has the lowest number of Akshaya centres in the state with 66 centres and no sub-centres.
- Thiruvananthapuram has the highest number of sub-centre in the states with 83 sub-centres.
- Ernakulam, Wayanad, Kasargod, Malappuram and Idukki do not have any centres that function under the catchment areas of the Akshaya centres.
- A total of Rs 12.10 crore has been allocated for the Akshaya project, with the year 2012-13 receiving the highest allocation of Rs 4 crore.
