Lok Sabha Question No. 1614 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2023-07-31
Subject: Education Programmes
Ministry: Education
Asked by: D. M. Kathir Anand

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION

## LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 1614 ANSWERED ON 31.07.2023

## Education Programmes

## 1614.  SHRI D.M. KATHIR ANAND:

Will the Minister of EDUCATION be pleased to state:

- (a)  whether the Government has taken any steps to provide adequate importance and prominence to quality  Educational  Channels  and  programmes  by  both  Prasar  Bharti  and  private  sponsor programme as well as the programme by CSIR and UGC;
- (b) the funds allocated, disbursed and utilised during the last eight years, year-wise for the production and telecast of education programmes;
- (c) the  details  of  the  educational  programmes  done  in  various  regional  languages  to  reach  out  the people from all linguistic areas of the country; and
- (d)  the  measures  taken  by  the  Government  to  promote/propagate  the  Government  schemes  and policies in Tamil language?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION (DR. SUBHAS SARKAR)

(a) With the objective to overcome the digital divide particularly in rural, tribal and remote areas, Ministry of Education provides high quality educational programmes through DTH channels. As on date, 92 DTH channels under MoE offer educational content for School and Higher Education and DTH capacity would be expanded to 280 channels shortly under PM eVidya program.

The programmes for higher education students are offered through various National Coordinators such as  University  Grants  Commission  (UGC),  All  India  Council  for  Technical  Education  (AICTE),  Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), IIM Bangalore and IIT Madras who curate and broadcast high  quality  educational  programmes  in  collaboration  with  various  institutions,  including  research institutions. All users of DD FreeDish of Prasar Bharti have access to these channels.

Private  DTH  operators  can  also  telecast  the  higher  education  content  developed  under  SWAYAM Prabha program without any additional cost.

(b)  Fund  released  by  Ministry  of  Education  for  various  purposes  such  as  content  development, production and telecast etc.are as follows:

| (Rs. In Crore)      | (Rs. In Crore)   | (Rs. In Crore)   | (Rs. In Crore)   | (Rs. In Crore)   | (Rs. In Crore)   | (Rs. In Crore)   | (Rs. In Crore)   | (Rs. In Crore)   | (Rs. In Crore)   |
|---------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------|------------------|
|                     | 2015- 16         | 2016- 17         | 2017- 18         | 2018- 19         | 2019- 20         | 2020- 21         | 2021- 22         | 2022- 23**       | Total            |
| Allocated           | -                | -                | 63.4             | 55.6             | 52.0             | 26.9             | 29.2             | 251.2            | 478.3            |
| Released & Utilized | -                | -                | 63.4             | 55.6             | 28.0             | 26.9             | 29.2             | 251.2            | 454.3            |

** Includes cost for expansion of 12 School education DTH channels to 200 under PM eVidya

(c)  With  an  objective  to  reach  out  to  people  of  diverse  linguistic  areas  of  the  country,  IGNOU  as  a National Coordinator of SWAYAM PRABHA, conducts live classes of various courses (History, Political Science, Sociology, Economics, Psychology, Public Administration and Environmental Science) on SWAYAM  PRABHA in  11  regional  languages  which  are  Assamese,  Bengali,  Gujarati,  Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu & Urdu along with Hindi and English since 06 January 2022. Till date 4500+ sessions have been conducted. All videos in regional languages are available on SWAYAM  PRABHA  archive.  250  MOOCs  courses  of  SWAYAM  have  also  been  translated  into  11 regional languages for wider dissemination.

(d)  The  National  Language  Technology  Mission  (DIGITAL  INDIA  BHASHINI),  has  been  launched  to provide  Artificial  Intelligence  (AI)  driven  language  technology  solutions  through  Bhashini  platform (https://bhashini.gov.in)  as  3-year  mission  for  all  22  Scheduled  Indian  Languages  including  Tamil. BHASHINI aims to increase the content in Indian languages on the internet substantially in the domains of public interest, particularly, governance, policy, and science & technology, etc.

AICTE has also developed an AI based translation tool Anuvadini which offer translation services for a wide variety of application including translation of public websites, textbooks, educational videos etc and is being used for translation of all type of education resources.

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