Government Announces 12 New ‘SWAYAM Prabha’ DTH Channels: All You Need to Know About This Initiative

The announcement was made by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on the education front during today's press conference on the 'Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan.'

New Delhi: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday addressed her fifth and final press conference in five days with regards to the Rs 20 lakh crore ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan’ economic package.

Today’s briefing, notably, took place on the following seven aspects: MGNREGA, health and education, business and COVID, decriminalisation of Companies Act, ease of doing business, public sector enterprises and state government resources.

Today, announcements will be made about 7 steps taken by the govt – MGNREGA, health & education related steps, business & COVID, decriminalization of Companies Act, ease of doing business, public sector enterprises, state govt resources: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman pic.twitter.com/bCzSzz5VTE

— ANI (@ANI) May 17, 2020

On the education front, the Union Finance Minister announced: “SWAYAM Prabha direct-to-home (DTH) channels launched to support and reach those who do not have access to the internet; now, 12 channels to be added.”

Online education during COVID19: Swayam Prabha DTH channels launched to support and reach those who do not have access to the internet; now 12 channels to be added: FM Nirmala Sitharaman pic.twitter.com/ddxHs3fuCk

— ANI (@ANI) May 17, 2020

The Arunachal Pradesh government had recently announced that online classes have been started for classes 1-12 on TV channels free of cost; one of the channels was ‘SWAYAM Prabha.’

So, what exactly is ‘SWAYAM Prabha’?

Here’s what ‘SWAYAM Prabha’ is all about:

Launched by the Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD), ‘SWAYAM Prabha’ is an initiative to provide 32 high-quality education channels through DTH across the country on a 24X7 basis.

‘SWAYAM’ stands for ‘Study Webs of Active Learning for Young-Aspiring Minds.’ It has new content everyday for four hours, which will be repeated five times a day, thus giving students an option to study as per their convenience. While the channel is uplinked from Gandhinagar, Gujarat, the content is provided by educational bodies like IITs, IGNOU, NCERT, UCG etc.

The programme telecasts are made using the GISAT-15 satellite.

As a whole, the channels cover higher education, school education (class 9-12), curriculum-based courses and assistance of class 11 and 12 students for competitive exams.

It is available for download on Google Play as well.

Now, after today’s announcement of 12 new channels, the total number of channels will now be 44.