Education is the biggest tool for development, the only path towards liberation and the greatest investment a country can make for its future. It is undoubtedly the most powerful weapon, with the potential to bring a massive change in the world. It cuts through the barriers put forward by the society and breaks the walls we confine our minds within. It makes us powerful, by instilling in us the capability to bring a change. It makes us accept what’s good, question what’s questionable and most importantly, dissent, against the wrongs. 2020 has been a devastatingly tough year which has not only affected the economies across the world, rattled political structures and governments but has also exposed and accelerated some pre-existing, deep rooted inequalities prevailing in the society. One area, which is majorly affected amid the coronavirus pandemic is the education sector. The sudden lockdown imposed to contain the spread of the infection, resulted in the closure of both public and private schools and colleges. Consequently, it did not take a lot of time for institutions to shift to the only alternate mode for teaching and learning - online. Looking at the present situation, when the number of cases and the death rates have been increasing every passing day, it forces the coming academic year to continue online. This has brought forward unprecedented challenges for teachers and students.
Of course, switching online in problematic times like these might seem like a convenient option for some, when they are sitting in pyjamas in a comfortable position on a leathery soft couch and attending classes, enjoying the luxuries of being at home. But the shade of reality hides underneath, for many, who suffer the costs of a system where learning has become exclusionary, where education becomes a luxury, a matter of privilege, where information reach becomes excessively selective.
There exists a wide disparity of access- from electricity, internet connectivity and availability of functional devices to the presence of a suitable learning environment at homes. There is a shallow, haphazard penetration of digital technologies in India. This is evident from the 2017-’18 National Sample Survey report on education, according to which only 24% of Indian households have an internet facility. While 66% of India’s population lives in villages, only a little over 15% of rural households have access to internet services. For urban households, the proportion is 42%. In fact, only 8% of all households with members aged between five and 24 have both a computer and an internet connection.
Even students from premier institutions like IIT are also facing the issue of inadequate internet connection and electronic devices back in their hometowns. This has kept the attendance rates staggering close to 30 per cent. The same problem persists with students of government schools in Delhi where attendance ranges between only 25-30%.
The statistics of availability of a stable electric connection in rural areas are also not impressive enough. Mission Antyodaya, a nationwide survey of villages conducted by the Ministry of Rural Development in 2017-’18, showed that 16% of India’s households received one to eight hours of electricity daily, 33% received 9-12 hours, and only 47% received more than 12 hours a day.
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Speaking of the presence of proper functional devices across Indian households, among the poorest 20% households, only 2.7% have access to a computer and 8.9% to internet facilities. In the case of the top 20% households, the proportions are 27.6% and 50.5%.
This gives rise to a very significant digital divide, resulting in educational inequality. Education of crores of students across the country for this academic year would be jeopardised, and the effects will remain for a long period of time. Experts fear that this digital divide would lead to a large number of students dropping out of school. A lot of students from poverty-stricken families opted out of the system, failing to see a bright future for themselves in the future. They were forced to partake in agricultural livelihoods to sustain their economically weaker families. For a population struggling for the essentials, working day and night to meet their ends, accomplishing academic goals is definitely a luxury, a dream far yet to achieve. In a country like India, where young girls from backward and rural areas have to still fight for a seat in classrooms despite a lot of efforts by the government including launching of schemes and programmes, imagining their condition in circumstances like these is not very difficult. There are numerous instances of young girls being restricted from using mobile phones. In 2019, the panchayat of Parsa village in Bihar's Madhubani banned the use of mobile phones by female students. A Khap panchayat of Madora village in Uttar Pradesh ruled that women found using a mobile phone outside their homes would be fined Rs21,000— a sum it would take most rural Indians several months to earn. These measures are not only regressive and derogatory to women, but are also unconstitutional. There are hundreds of such conservative restrictions put on young girls and women across India. This gender gap further widens the educational inequality already prevailing far and wide.
Talking of students with physical or mental disabilities, for whom accessibility is a challenge even under normal circumstances, education for them amid the pandemic leaves them under even greater threat of being left behind. They lack the additional support and care that they require, remote lessons often lack accessibility features, and even if they do have them, they aren’t very much available to all the learners. They have complex learning needs and there are very few institutions who are able to fulfill them.
In fact, the deep disparity in online learning is just not a problem in India, but exists significantly in other parts of the world too. School closures and distance learning have exacerbated the pre-existing educational gaps, especially for students of color and students from lower-income communities. In a report by the Los Angeles Unified School,more than 50,000 Black and Latino middle and high school students in Los Angeles did not regularly participate in the school system’s main platform for virtual classrooms after campuses closed in March.
The very promising National Education Policy (NEP) released by MHRD, has emphasised the integration of technology in all levels of learning. Inclusion is a theme beyond technology as well. It aims at universal access to schools, and aims to bring two crore out-of-school children back into the educational mainstream. The policy also says that a ‘Gender Inclusion Fund’ would be set up to build the country’s capacity to provide equitable quality education to all girls and transgender students. The policy, if implemented properly, has a great potential to fill in the educational gaps and the digital divide significantly. However, the gendered implications and its effects on the marginalised groups need to be studied critically. In a country where English is associated with employability and privilege, turning the medium of instruction into the mother tongue would somehow impede the child’s progress towards educational opportunities and employment accessibility. However, it has its own positive aspects too, as it will contribute towards an easy learning process and better understanding.
It is high time that both the state and the private players play their role of ensuring equitability in education. The technical challenges of providing education to all sections of society have yet not been overcome, and in such a circumstance, due to lack of proper infrastructure, total reliance on online learning will lead to deep impacts on a child’s mind and overall development. India can greatly reduce the digital divide also by manufacturing digital equipments that can be used for education services as they would serve the twin purpose of indigenous manufacturing and bridging the digital divide.
We can also take inspiration from some other countries like Egypt and Croatia who have approached telecom service providers for free access of educational content to the lower socioeconomic classes. Waivers on internet charges, taking forward BharatNet to provide WiFi hotspots in remote areas, provision to provide electronic devices to students from backward areas, increasing the bandwidth of network by collaboration with telecom companies are some of the crucial steps which can be taken to bridge this digital divide. Though this pandemic poses a plethora of challenges, it also serves as an opportunity to rethink how emergency education planning can be inclusive for children with disabilities, and the marginalised.
All this must be done keeping in mind the 3As- Availability, Accessibility, and Affordability. Education is the key driver for the reduction of poverty, fostering economic growth, achieving gender equality and most of all, providing a better life to millions of people. It is the only thing which can never be compromised, and hence, all the stakeholders must come forward to ensure equitable education, and ensure that money, privilege or power does not come in the way of a child’s basic “Right to Education”. Because if not now, then when?
WRITTEN BY MEDHA NANDINI
References
1.https://scroll.in/article/960939/indian-education-cant-go-online-only-8-of-homes-with-school-ch
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on-air/article31264767.ece
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