PM Modi's 'Digital India' gets big boost from Khadi

Mobile and broadband connectivity have the power to change the lives of poor and backward communities, and give them a brighter future. This can be easily seen in Khadi and Village Industries Commission – one of biggest job providers in the country – which is bringing to life Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of Digital India.

The KVIC – the nodal agency of the Prime Minister Employment Generation Program (PMEGP), had taken various steps of digitalization – to increase organizational capacity to meet the various requirements towards implementation of this scheme. Earlier PMEGP was implemented offline. Till June 30, 2016, total applications received were 59,479. From July 1, KVIC launched online portal and as many as 4,04.354 online applications were received. The software used for digitalization of PMEGP was developed in-house by the IT team of the KVIC, subsequently saving approximately Rs 20 crore of the government exchequers as some external agency could have charged this for it.

KVIC Chairman Vinai Kumar Saxena said that earlier the Ministry had set a target of Rs 1,100 crore for PMEGP in 2016-17, but KVIC achieved it only on March 15. "Later, the ministry added another Rs 100 crore in the target, which also was achieved on March 25. Again, Rs 50 crore was added in it, but our overall achievement also crossed it with the annual figure of Rs 1,281 crore in 2016-17," he said, adding, "Altogether 3,98,955 new employment were generated, with an estimated project cost of Rs 4,778 crore and that is a huge growth of approximately 24 percent with respect to financial year 2015-16."

He further said that the online portal had brought transparency and expedited disbursement of Margin Money subsidy under the PMEGP scheme.