Hirachuni to be J’khand’s first digital village soon

Hirachuni, a village in East Singhbhum’s Jamshedpur block, is set to launch its own Facebook and BlogSpot page, as a part of the Digital India campaign to promote digital literacy in remote places. The village is already distinctive — it has an impressive literacy rate of 95%.

“We’ve launched the drive under Digital India in Hiramuni village as it has a handsome literacy rate of 95% as per Census-2011. Moreover, the village has net connectivity through BSNL, Reliance 4G, Airtel and Idea cellular networks. The village will have its own Facebook page and BlogSpot in a day or two,” Sanjay Kumar Pandey, deputy collector at the chief minister’s residential Camp Office at Jamshedpur, told HT.

“Most of the youths in the village already know how to operate the internet and most have smart phones. And the Youth Boys Club – the local village club – has taken it upon itself to make their fellow villagers digitally literate. We hope Hirachuni will turn into state’s first digital village in a fortnight,” said Pandey.

Pandey and common service centre operator Ashok Kumar Mahato, on Monday installed aluminium nameplates on the doors of five Hirachuni households. These plates sport the name of the head of the family, his email Id and his WhatsApp number.

“We’ve already created email Ids for 47 out of 60 households in the village. We’ll launch at least one email account and WhatsApp number for each household. The email Ids are being created in a series. For example, if the family head’s name is XYZ, the email id would be hirachuni.XYZ@gmail.com,” Mahato said.