-The Hindu Evidence of significant disparity in access to online schooling during COVID-19 Schools across the country have now been closed for six months due to COVID-19, but this means vastly different things for different people. For the child in urban Himachal Pradesh, where Internet penetration is higher than 70%, it likely means online schooling, Zoom classes and digital textbooks. For the child in rural Odisha, where less than 6% of households...
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A Reality Check on India’s Search for Digital Utopia -Preeti Mudliar
-The Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the persistent digital divide afflicting rural India owing to poor and insufficient internet connectivity. With the Prime Minister’s Independence Day speech acknowledging the need ‘to complete’ internet connectivity to villages, there is a renewed vigour and interest in the National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN)/BharatNet project. An important question to pose when translating policy to project is: when should...
More »Education dreams fade for millions in digitally divided India
-PTI/ The Indian Express NGOs working with people with disabilities have expressed concern over the issues faced by students in e-education. Akhila Sivadas, executive director at the Centre for Advocacy and Research, a non-profit organisation, said the government needs to provide education that is accessible to students with disabilities. New Delhi/ Mumbai: The digital divide stretches long and deep across the expanse of India, further separating the haves from the have-nots and...
More »As classes go online, how can the Right to Education be guaranteed for students without net access? -Rohan Deshpande
-Scroll.in The expectation that students will buy devices to receive education at their own cost is contrary to the spirit of the RTE Act. In April 2010, India brought into force the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, acknowledging the state’s responsibility to provide free and compulsory education to all children from the age of six to 14 years. The act was a consequence of Article 21A being...
More »Can MGNREGA be a tool for post-COVID-19 rural recovery -Shilp Verma
-Down to Earth Agriculture is the least-affected sector of the economy. It is poised to gain and lead economy’s revival process ‘Year of COVID-19’— this is how 2020 is probably going to be remembered. It has been more than six months that the novel coronavirus disease has been dominating public discourse, news cycles, internet searches and even geopolitics. As on July 8, 2020, India had more than 0.7 million cases. It was among...
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