A 'Digital India' that fails on access to online education

With a mere 3% of the GDP spending on education, it is impossible to democratise access to it

The coronavirus pandemic has erected innumerable challenges before the country. It has resulted in an overburdened and exhausted healthcare system, a crippled economy with amplified unemployment and loss of livelihoods and a crumbled education system that has impacted millions of schoolchildren.

School education has been impacted across the world. According to Unesco, the pandemic resulted in the prolonged closure of schools affecting the educational prospects of more than 290 million children— this at a time when six million children were already out of school.

In developing nations like India, the situation is grave as there are unprecedented levels of economic contraction, unparalleled unemployment rates and excessive fiscal burden on families. This hampers especially those who belong to the economically marginalised groups in both rural and urban areas to access education. There are numerous reports that suggest that the pandemic has had a far-reaching impact on India’s school education. There are worrisome trends showing a steady increase in dropout rates mainly of students in Classes 6-10. and this has largely been attributed to heavy debts, financial strains and unemployment due to the pandemic.

Financially strained families are likely to compel children to become extra earning members. A large number of Indian children today work alongside their parents and take up odd jobs to add to the family’s already meagre income pool. These worrisome trends raise a concern about the possibilities of these children ever returning back to classrooms.

The scale and magnanimity of the crisis can be understood by a Unicef data, according to which 1.5 million schools across the country closed down due to the pandemic and the ‘new normal’ saw the widespread emphasis and assertion on digital technologies and online teaching-learning as the solution to fill the educational void. But the truth at the ground level is different. This transition has only brought about exclusivist access to learning, erected walls of separation and hierarchy and has become a solution of the few rather than a democratic, shared solution of the masses.

According to a 2019 survey conducted by the National Statistical Office, only 24% of urban households have access to smartphones, electronic devices and internet connectivity and only 4% have access to such resources in rural India. The extent to which technology-driven education is a far-fetched reality in India and is inaccessible for a majority of Indian children can be estimated from the fact that a 2018 Niti Aayog report tells us that 55,000 villages in India didn’t yet have mobile connectivity, moreover a study conducted by the Ministry of Rural Development in 2017-18 documents that more than 36% of schools don’t have access to electricity even today and only 4% of those living in rural areas use a mobile phone with an internet connection. How then can we expect a smooth transition to an education premised on access to technology?

It is ironic that despite the lack of infrastructure and adequate preparedness, we have begun seeing technology-driven education as an answer to the educational challenges brought by the pandemic, negating and overlooking the harsh truth that such a paradigm shift is alienating, humiliating and is discriminatory towards millions of children, especially those who come from the financially weaker sections of the society.

Are we laughing at their economic vulnerabilities, mocking their marginalisation and social decadence and telling them that even though we call ourselves a welfare state, their education is never a priority? With a mere 3% of the GDP spending on education, it is impossible to democratise access to education especially at a time when the digital divide has deepened the cleavages in an already hierarchical and unequal educational paradigm.

If a country that prides itself in being a welfare state doesn’t do anything, we must hang our heads in shame. Education in this country is a Constitutional right after all, and every child must have access to it.

(The writer is founder-editor of 'The New Leam', an independent media organisation)