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Inequities and challenges faced by rural areas of India access to education amidst COVID-19
Inequities and challenges faced by rural areas of India access to education amidst COVID-19
The COVID-19 has brought some unforeseen challenges for all over the world. The implication of the huge lockdown of everything and everywhere have a lasting impact on various domains, mainly on education sector. The country have been forced to shut down schools and education institutions to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the reportedly impact more than 32 crore students in India.
On April 15, 2020, the ministry of home affairs issued a notification of guidelines to be followed during lockdown period. The ministry has directed the schools and institution to use the technology and adhere the academic calendar through online education and encored the use of doordarshan and education channels for teaching purposes. But many students across the country with access to little or no digital infrastructure are now faced with unbelievable practical challenges.
A country with worlds the largest youth population has now been totally dependent on an E- learning experiment of unprecedented scale and scope. Somewhere this is easy for metropolitan cities to adapt, quickly and get results for the same but this is very big challenge for those in rural areas. Many factors were effecting the rural areas like — lack of infrastructure, internet availability, no computers in schools, inability of underprivileged students to procure computers, lack of digital literacy amongst both teacher and students. Students in rural areas and children of migrant workers experiencing homelessness due to lockdown are most impacted students.
Only 21.3% of students had access to computers in their schools. The government of India’s ambitious Bharat net program to connect more than 6 lakhs villages through 2.5 lakh gram panchayats or village blocks with high speed internet is also far from achieving its targets. Only 8.33% of all gram panchayats have service ready WiFi hotspots.
Our constitution not only guarantees the right to education, it goes even further to ensure access to education of satisfactory and equitable quality to all children, without any discrimination. The digital India remains a distant dream for large number of students.
