Empowering rural women with personal computers, jobs

For a woman who did not even know what a computer looked like, Triveni M has come a long way. She now spends a lot of time emailing and chatting with her friends and sending e-cards to relatives. On the professional front, the 24-year-old keeps feeding in stocks’ data that streams into the store she works at.

This is a major shift from her earlier routine, where she toiled in the kitchen from dawn to dusk.

A basic computer course learnt six months ago, which taught her about the Internet, MS Office, Tally, as well as a smattering of English, helped her bag a job at the Jnanabhandara wholesale store in Mandya district of Karnataka. She now earns around Rs5,500 per month.

“I had absolutely no clue about computers prior to the course,” says Triveni. “After completing my education till twelfth standard from my village Hosahalli in Mandya, I started looking for jobs, but was turned away because I had no knowledge of computers,” she says. Then, through a local newspaper, she got to know about a free computer course for women, whose families earned less than Rs40,000 per annum.

She felt the course would fetch a respectable job and a decent salary, which can contribute towards her household expenses.

Triveni is one among the 5,000 women from Karnataka districts such as Mandya, Tumkur, Shimoga, Chitradurga, Chikamagalur, Bellary, Bidar, Kolar, who have been given basic training in computers as part of an initiative started two years ago by the Karnataka government and software firm Tally
Solutions.

These women are now employed in book and provision stores, retail outlets, call centres, where they do work pertaining to billing, cash counters, front office, help desks, etc earning an average Rs6,000-7,000 per month.

Funding for the course is provided by the Ministry for Women and Child Development and the Government of Karnataka, while the scheme is executed by Tally.

Salim Ahmed, who teaches the course at Smart Computer World in Mandya, says the aim is to build confidence among these women by training them in soft skills, communication, in addition to the computer training, all of which can help in getting employment.

“For any job interview, they ask about computer skills. In our villages, there is hardly any computer awareness and a majority have no access to it,” says 22-year-old Noor Abida, from Subhashnagar in Mandya, who also completed the course and has been working as a lecturer at Dr Shyamala Reddy Dental College in Bangalore since the last seven months, drawing about `15,000 per month.

Abida, who is a BSc in microbiology from Mandya Government Women’s College, says that not even the basics of computers were taught during her graduation. “Today, I know Word, Excel, Internet; all of which helped in getting this job,” says Abida.

Triveni says that without knowledge of computers, even if women from her district manage to get jobs, those are mostly sales jobs in small stores or tailoring jobs, which would fetch them about Rs1,000 per month.

But with knowledge of computers, the same women can earn upto Rs10,000 monthly, or even more, in call centres, retail outlets, etc, says Abida.

Avinash Gupta, president, Tally, says that the focus is to train atleast 15 women from each taluka and assist them with placements.

“Before selecting the candidates, based on criteria of annual income and age, we went from village to village in talukas such as Malavalli, Maddur, Pandavpura, Krishnarajpete, Srirangapatna,” says Ahmed. “We would meet the panchayats there, speak to the eligible women, and encourage them to undertake this course.”

With courses spanning over three to four months, the women were rigorously trained from Monday to Friday, for five hours daily. “Some women were so shy and bereft of confidence, that they could not even attend job interviews in their native tongue. Several could not understand a word of English,” says Ahmed.
“After doing this course, I felt a lot more confident about actually searching for jobs and going to a metro and working,” says Abida.