Mahingaon and Teusa in Bihar's Kishanganj district joined 28 other panchayats across 14 states during the Digital India Week celebrations, which ended on July 7.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Digital India on July 1 to "transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy". On the occasion, Modi also announced that 30 panchayats would take part in the Digital India Week, as these have been connected with optical fibre cables.
Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) chief general manager G.S. Chaturvedi said they had chosen the two panchayats of Mahingaon and Teusa, around 375km east of Patna, as both provide high-speed bandwidth.
"Over the seven days, we lined up several programmes to sensitise the villagers about the Digital India initiative. It started with a video-conferencing between BBNL officials and those from the panchayats. Apart from video-conferencing between the different panchayats, we also showed them the use of Internet, e-governance activities such as birth certificate, caste certificate, ration card and others, e-education, Swachh Bharat Mission, awareness on yoga and various health issues. The villagers learned about e-banking and various e-commerce activities like online shopping, railway reservation, share trading among others," added Chaturvedi.
BBNL - the special purpose vehicle in charge of digitally linking all villages across the country - has already connected all panchayats with optical fibre cables in two districts, Kishanganj and Sheohar, in Bihar. "Work to connect panchayats in four other districts, including Patna, is going to end shortly," Chaturvedi said. He added that BBNL also organised a quiz contest among the youth and schoolchildren on the demonstrated subject during the seven-day campaign for Digital India.
Kishori Paswan, the mukhiya of Teusa panchayat, said: "We had only heard about the Internet but last week we saw how it works. BBNL officials from Patna came and conducted trainings at our panchayat for seven days."
Jawahar Lal Rai, mukhiya, Mahingaon, echoed Kishori. "We had never thought that we could see people in Gujarat talking to us on a computer screen," he said.
During the Digital India Week, a multi-party conference was held between these two panchayats with Hardwar's Pherpur panchayat (Uttarakhand), Sahpur panchayat of Mehsana (Gujarat), Behalana panchayat of Chandigarh, Nua of Ajmer (Rajasthan) and the BBNL corporate office in New Delhi.
Sanjay Singh of Mahingaon said: "At least 100 people took part in the week-long camp at our village. I also learnt video-conferencing, as everyday we used to talk to panchayat members in Teusa, around 35km from our village."
The work on laying optical fibre cables has been going on at a great pace, Chaturvedi said, adding: "Bihar is the only state from the east and Northeast to be chosen for the Digital India Week celebrations."
