Are you digitally literate, who uses social media, tweets, emails, blogs, views YouTube and knows cyber security basics?

Development is possible only if people are digitally literate, state IT secretary Sunil Kumar Barnwal told over 100 college-goers at a Digital India meet in Ranchi on Thursday.

Meant for students of 20 constituent and affiliated colleges of Ranchi University (RU), the meet was held at Aryabhatta Auditorium on the varsity's Morabadi campus.

Besides state IT secretary Barnwal as chief guest, other dignitaries included IT special secretary Sarvesh Singhal as guest of honour, varsity vice chancellor R.K. Pandey, pro VC M. Razziuddin, Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) commissioner Prashant Kumar and Amit Kumar of the department of electronics and IT, under ministry of communication and IT, government of India.

On Digital India's Start Up India initiative, Barnwal urged youths to start their own firms instead of searching for jobs to applause from college-goers.

Barnwal gave the example of Kerala. "The first e-literate state in our country, Kerala, helps the common man use tools of information and communication technology to improve living standards and empower himself in socio-economic spheres," he said.

"Digital India is about empowering citizens," Barnwal stressed.

Ranchi University VC Pandey said digitisation led to visible changes in daily life. "Thanks to it, long queues are no longer seen before ration shops or university fee counters. We are also planning to digitise our library books in our varsity's central library, as we have many old books and journals that need to be archived and preserved," Pandey said.

RMC town commission Kumar spoke on how technology would help civic monitoring and make Ranchi cleaner. "We're planning to install GPS (global positioning system) devices in garbage-lifting vehicles to keep track on the work they do," he said.

Ranchi University is among 20 in the country to host the Digital India workshop. Others include Patna University, Andhra University, Raipur University, Delhi University, Gujarat University, Pune University, Anna University (Chennai), Osmania University (Hyderabad), Mahatma Gandhi University (Kottayam), among others.