Challenge Of Digital Divide In The Changing Landscape Of Education

Education has been the most affected sector due to COVID 19 pandemic as schools have shut due to rapid spread of virus and vulnerabilities of unvaccinated children. Due to social distancing mandates and use of lockdowns to contain the spread of the diseases, the schools, colleges and other educational institutions cancelled their classes, examinations, etc. and had to forcibly switch to the online modes.

• Teachers being replaced by laptops, computers and webcams, created many opportunities as well as challenges for the educational institutes to strengthen their technological knowledge and infrastructure. All these changes have occurred rapidly over a very short period. The affluent sections have been able to cope up with rapid changes in the sector while at the same time challenges of digital divide have hindered access to education for the marginalized sections.

Digital Divide in India

Digital Divide refers to the gap between the demography and regions that have access to tools of digital communication technology and those who do not have access to such technologies.

• Lack of Internet Penetration: India has the world’s second largest internet users at about 600 million, comprising more than 12% of all users globally. But half of India’s population lacks internet access. More than 400 million of India’s people still have no access to the internet.
• Rural-Urban Gaps: The internet density in rural areas, constituting more than 60% of population, is still low at 25% compared to the internet density in urban areas (90%). The states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh with very low internet use density. According to statistics, more than 75 per cent of the broadband connections in the country are in the top 30 cities.
• Gender Divide: India ranks high in gender gaps in technology. Only 21 per cent of women in India are mobile internet users, according to GSMA’s mobile gender gap report, while 42 per cent of men have access.
• Lack of Digital Tools: According to NSO surveys just 4% of the rural households are having access to computers as compared to only 23% in urban areas.
• Digital Literacy: According to NSO, only 24% of the persons between age 15-29 years in rural areas were able to operate a computer while it was 56% in urban areas.

Impact of Digital Divide on Education

A study by the Azim Premji Foundation showed that almost 60 per cent of school children in India could not access online learning opportunities during the lockdown. Even among students of urban private schools, half of the parents reported issues with Internet signal and speed, which has created the following issues-

• Learning Gaps: During March 2020 to 2021, Indian schools were fully closed for 62% of working days, and partially for 38% of working days. School closures placed 320 million students including 158 million girls suddenly out of schools. Online medium was the only means of getting access to education. It has put millions of children at the risk of dropping out and creating large learning gaps.
• Vicious Cycles: Lack of access to digital resources has deprived the poor and marginalized sections of learning opportunities, which will lead to lower human development, lack of employment, lack of access to healthcare, and hunger and poverty. Thus it creates a vicious cycle for the poor who face cascading effects.
• Inequalities: Lack of digital resources gives rise to increasing inequalities in the education system. The well-off students have unfair advantages over the poor and marginalized.
• Increase in Child Labour: Lack of access to education due to fears of dropping out of school may also increase the chances of children being drawn into child labour or child trafficking.
• Disparities in Learning Outcomes: India has invested huge capital over the years to improve access to education and there have been gains in educational outcomes. Deprivation of digital would sound a death knell in the achievements gained over the past decades.

Possibilities and Prospects

Government has opened new platforms such as education through DTH channels mobile vans, radio etc. E-vidya was started as a part of Atmanirbhar Bharat Program; DIKSHA (one nation, one digital platform) was established as nation’s digital infrastructure program for providing quality e-content for school education in states. There is need to explore innovative ways to expand ICT infrastructure, increase access to internet, and further reduce the cost of service, especially for rural areas.