Help poor students go digital

Students who had missed most of their schooling for two years due to the pandemic got a chance to return to their classrooms in October. However, reports now suggest that most states have decided to shut schools again and the learning process will return to the online mode. With no let-up in the spread of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2, states have little option but to close schools as they would act as a medium for the spread of the virus.

The closure of the schools and the return to the much touted online classes, however, pose a serious question: the access of children to technology tools. A survey conducted in 15 states last year came out with the shocking finding that only eight per cent students in rural areas attended online classes. Worse, 37 per cent students have practically dropped out of classes. The parents are worried that the children will never get back to their former ways of learning and wanted the schools to open at the earliest.

This shows that the digital divide that exists in the world of grown-ups has permeated downwards. It is unacceptable. It is education that ensures fast and vertical mobility for the underprivileged classes and the rural masses. The pandemic has hit them hard, and threatens to impact their future generations as well.

The NDA government had launched a Digital India programme in 2015 with much fanfare, promising to connect every village. Had it worked to plan, our villages and the urban poor would not have been kept out of online education. But sadly, that has not happened. The government must at least now rework the Digital India programme with a view to reaching high speed broadband connectivity to every household so that the pandemic is not allowed to smother the dreams of yet another generation of rural and urban poor.