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NEW DELHI: After three years of community engagement including even those residents aged 100 and older, Kerala has India’s first fully digitally literate state.

Efforts began in Pullampara, a village near the state capital Thiruvananthapuram, when rural workers employed under a government scheme started receiving payments digitally into their bank accounts. They needed to go online to confirm that their wages had been paid correctly.

“Villagers needed digital literacy to see their salary in bank. The digital transfer of salary was the spur for a new digital learning,” Rajesh P.V, head of the Pullampara village council, told Arab News.

“In 2022, with the help of the government, we managed to start the campaign for digital literacy.”

The campaign was initially aimed at those aged up to 60, but older villagers also showed interest.

“We managed to educate the whole village. People as old as 103 also joined the class,” Rajesh said.

“People who were using smartphones only for calling suddenly became conscious that there are many ways the phones can be used. They suddenly felt the world had come so close to them. Elderly people started using it for watching news, and they understood how to use mobile phones to enhance their engagement.”

The efforts in Pullampara were then replicated across Kerala, with local self-help groups operating under Kudumbashree, a state-level poverty eradication and women’s empowerment program.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan announced the program’s completion on Thursday, referring to a similar success in 1991 when the state became the most literate in India.

“Kerala was the first to achieve total literacy in April 1991, and now, we are the first to become fully digitally literate too,” Vijayan said, citing central government data stating only 38 percent of Indian households have digital literacy.

Kerala’s literacy is estimated to be around 96.2 percent for individuals aged seven and above, compared with India’s average of 80 percent.

Digital literacy is often measured per household rather than per person. If at least one person in a household can use digital tools such as smartphones and banking apps, it counts as digitally literate.

Rajesh, who was part of the literacy campaign in the 1990s, said he was happy to witness both events.

“We have kept pace with time, and we have made people understand the value of technology,” he said.

In his village, seniors who wanted to learn to navigate the digital world have achieved more than the initial aim of using online banking.

Padmini Vishwamnathan, a 65-year-old homemaker who lives with her 75-year-old husband, said the couple was now exploring other things that previously seemed beyond their reach.

“I managed to learn much more than what I thought. Digital literacy opened a new world for me and my husband,” she said.

“Now I can learn cookery, I can learn knitting and watch so many funny videos. My husband loves to watch the news and also watches old movies.”

Vishwamnathan has now completed secondary school and, decades later, is discovering new opportunities to learn.

“I can still improve my education through digital platforms,” she told Arab News.

“I am still a little nervous using the internet for banking, but I love using and exploring the digital world. It seems the world has suddenly come to our home.”

DHAKA: Bangladesh and Pakistan on Sunday signed a series of agreements during Pakistani Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar’s visit to Dhaka — the first such high-level engagement in more than a decade.

Dar arrived in Dhaka on Saturday, two days after the visit of Pakistani Commerce Minister Jam Kamal Khan.

He is the most senior Pakistani official to visit Bangladesh since 2012. Pakistan’s government has referred to the trip as historic and a “significant milestone” in relations, which have been growing since a student-led uprising ousted Bangladesh’s former leader, Sheikh Hasina, last year.

After a series of meetings with Bangladesh’s interim administration, Dar and Bangladeshi Foreign Affairs Adviser Touhid Hossain signed a set of understandings aimed at strengthening trade and diplomatic relations.

“Pakistan is an important neighbor of ours in South Asia. Our relationship with Pakistan is historical and diverse. In this context, at today’s meeting, we expressed a firm determination to advance our existing ties,” Hossain said.

The documents signed on Sunday included an agreement to exempt visa requirements for officials and diplomats, as well as memorandums of understanding on establishing a joint working group on trade, cooperation between foreign service academies and national news agencies, and an institutional partnership between the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies and the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad.

Hossain also confirmed plans to begin direct flights between the two countries, as “two Pakistani airlines got primary approval to operate direct flights.”

While talks “focused on increasing trade and investment,” he said they “agreed to stay close on bilateral and multilateral issues.”

There was no substantive trade or diplomatic engagement between Islamabad and Dhaka for years, largely due to Bangladesh’s war crimes trials related to the 1971 war — which led to the country’s independence from what was then West Pakistan — and because Hasina’s government was hostile toward Islamabad.

She was closely allied with India, where she is exiled. While her removal from office was followed by a cooling of relations between Dhaka and New Delhi, exchanges with Islamabad started to grow.

One of the planned arenas for Bangladesh-Pakistan cooperation on the international stage will be the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, an intergovernmental organization to promote economic development and regional integration of South Asian countries — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

Once envisioned as a South Asian version of the ASEAN, the association has struggled to function effectively in recent years, mainly due to India-Pakistan rivalry.

“We discussed the cooperation in the regional platforms and SAARC. This cooperation will increase further,” Hossain said.

Dar also met the head of Bangladesh’s interim government, Nobel laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus, to speak about the “revival of old connections between the two countries, promoting youth linkages, enhancing connectivity, and augmenting trade and economic cooperation,” the Pakistani Foreign Office said.

But whether there will be significant cooperation between the former foes is not likely to be decided by the current government, Shomsher Mobin Chowdhury, Bangladesh’s former foreign secretary, told Arab News, as Yunus’s administration is expected to hold general elections in February 2026 and remains cautious in its steps.

“We know that interim government tenures are always short lived. How long will this one last — we do not know. So, Pakistan is showing its eagerness to establish its relations with Bangladesh ... The signal is coming from Pakistan, and we are being typically receptive,” Chowdhury said.

“Pakistan is trying to send a political message ... It is up to us to decide how we react to it in the midterm and long term. And it is for the next political government to decide what to do with it.”