Mobile and broadband connectivity has the power to change the lives of poor and backward communities, and give them a brighter future. This can be seen from the initiative taken by Khadi and Village Industries Commission — one of the biggest job providers in the country — in bringing to life PM Narendra Modi’s vision of Digital India.
KVIC — the nodal agency of Prime Minister Employment Generation Program (PMEGP) — has taken various steps of digitalisation to increase organisational 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, the KVIC launched online portal which received as many as 4,04.354 online applications. The software used for digitalisation of PMEGP was developed in-house by the IT team of the KVIC, saving approximately Rs 20 crore of its estimated development cost,” KVIC Chairman Vinai Kumar Saxena said.
Earlier the Ministry had set a target of Rs 1,100 crore for PMEGP in 2016-17, but the Commission achieved the target by March 15 itself.
“Later, the Ministry added another Rs 100 crore in the target, which also was achieved on March 25. The target was enhanced by Rs 50 crore , but our overall achievement surpassed it clocking an annual figure of Rs 1,281 crore in 2016-17,” he said.
Saxena added that altogether 3,98,955 new employment were generated with an estimated project cost of Rs 4,778 crore. This is a huge growth of approximately 24 per cent in financial year 2015-16.
Saxena further said that the online portal had brought transparency and expedited disbursement of Margin Money subsidy under the PMEGP scheme. KVIC has introduced online submission of application by the prospective beneficiaries and the payment of Margin Money subsidy is directly made into the beneficiary account through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT).
With the digitalisation of the whole process, not only the applicants can now track the status of their applications at any point of time, it had also taken out even the minor chance for middlemen to bluff applicants.
Similarly, the KVIC had also digitalised the entire payment process of the MPDA, for supporting implementation of Khadi programme.
“Under the modified Market Promotion and Development Assistance (MPDA) scheme, financial assistance of 30 per cent of Prime Cost of khadi and polyvastra has been provided to institutions — which will be distributed amongst 40 percent each to Artisans and Producing Institutions and 20 percent to Selling Institutions through online transfer to KIs and artisans,” he said, adding, “During the financial year 2016-17 — 1,735 Khadi institutions filed their claims online for an amount of Rs 209.46 crores — of which Rs 187.93 crores were recommended by the State offices and an amount of Rs 182.75 crores were disbursed directly into the banks accounts of Khadi institutions, including the accounts of as many as 3,09,673 artisans.”
Source: dailypioneer
