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At villages such as these across the country, internet-based learning is gradually extending its reach, luring children back to school and helping villagers improve their lives and grow their businesses. With a population of over one billion, the government has a challenging task in ensuring universal elementary education. While there has been an increase in the number of educational institutes across the country, especially in the past few years, the problem of illiteracy in rural areas, particularly among female population, still remains unsolved. Can the digital divide be bridged by the digital dividend from India’s leadership in information and communication technology?
India’s IT majors have taken up the challenge and are gearing up to win a new battleground — the rural masses. Education, the lynchpin of e-governance, IT services and the bedrock of India’s outsourcing powerhouse in IT-enabled services, is now in focus with all majors ranging from global players in IT hardware to curriculum design hotshots marking out their territory.
The prize? India’s unlettered and sometimes unnumbered masses who make up the other side of the statistic of India’s 65 per cent literacy rate. Compare it with India’s mobile subscriber base of 70 per cent, and the opportunity being addressed becomes fairly clear. While India’s economic juggernaut is riding on the fast adoption of technology-based and aided learning, the opportunities provided in repeating the leapfrog in terms of higher earning ability, better quality of life and consequent increased consumer demand in the un-addressed space is making rural education more critical for success.
In December 2010, Wipro chairman and software tycoon Azim Premji created a $2 billion fund to improve education in rural and small-town India. The Azim Premji Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation, has been working to promote computer-aided learning in schools since 2002. The foundation has worked with over 25,000 schools, involving nearly 2.5 million children.
Providing critical support infrastructure for rural education, the Infosys Foundation also offers an edge to deprived and rural students through its activities.
In what is one of the largest rural education programmes in the country, the foundation has donated 10,200 sets of books in Karnataka alone, and in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Kerala under its “library for every rural school” project. Through this programme, the foundation has set up more than 10,150 libraries in rural government schools. A minimum of 200 books, depending on the strength of the school, is provided.
Similarly, HCL founder Shiv Nadar, via his eponymous foundation, has started VidyaGyaan, a unique experiment to provide public school-style residential education to children from underserved rural communities.
Another initiative, Microsoft’s Project Shiksha, aims to accelerate IT literacy among school teachers and students in India and has created a milestone by training 200,000 teachers since 2003. Under the project, run in partnership with state governments, Microsoft has MoUs with 10 states for 11 academies, offering resources, including tools, programmes, and practices to promote the use of IT in education. The 11 IT academies span across Uttaranchal (Dehradun), Andhra Pradesh (Hyderabad), Karnataka (Gulbarga, Dharwad, Bangalore), Maharashtra (Pune, Nagpur, Aurangabad), Rajasthan (Jaipur), Tamil Nadu (Chennai) and Madhya Pradesh (Bhopal). The project has impacted 10 million students across the country.
Google, on the other hand, is supporting Bharti Foundation’s Satya Bharti School programme with a $5 million fund, announced earlier this year. The foundation, founded and supported by Airtel, has built 550 schools since inception in 2000. Its large scale, replicable project approach aims to develop an education model that can be implemented in rural areas and can withstand the roughest grassroot level circumstances, like lack of infrastructure, quality of teachers, learning levels of students and the like.
Meanwhile, Nokia has been piloting its handset-based Ovi Life Tools, using entry-level cellphones and basic keypad functions to share a motley package covering agriculture, healthcare and education. The self-learning tests in English enable rural users to practice the language every day with different levels of difficulty and explanations in local languages. The software can also test progress with periodical quizzes.
But this is simply scratching the surface. Next-gen digital ICT education is the way ahead for India, if it has to maintain its growth rate and be an economic superpower. India spends 4.1 per cent of its GDP on education and ICT tools are seen as important enablers that can support the move from traditional teacher-centric teaching styles to learner-centric methods. Given the paucity of teachers and the lack of basic infrastructure, such as roads, pervasive data and telecom networks, newer forms of education delivery are becoming the norm to bridge the divide.
Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the government’s flagship programme for universalisation of elementary education in a time-bound manner, as mandated by the Right to Education Act, has kickstarted several initiatives across the country. While SSA is being implemented in partnership with state governments to cover the entire country and address the needs of 192 million children in 1.1 million habitations, by extending and creating new infrastructure, a number of state governments have started public-private partnership (PPP) projects to achieve a multiplier effect on the Rs 13,100 crore allocated in the last budget.
But it’s not all altruism driven by sustainable, responsible corporate behaviour. The government, through its PPP model, is not only providing critical funding but also giving impetus to India Inc to address opportunities to drive innovation in this space.
Consider this: The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has set up a lab-in-a-box called Tatkal Kaksha or instant classroom. The lab has 20 computers with internet, printer and power supply. NCERT is now planning to invite children from various government and municipal schools in Delhi to test the prototype.
According to Vasudha Kamat, joint director, Central Institute of Educational Technology, a unit of NCERT, this innovation will cut down on the time required for rolling out ICT infrastructure in rural schools. Though the government is supposed to provide computers to add value to primary education, few schools in villages and remote areas are ready with infrastructure, such as a laboratory or even electricity. This lab-cum-box can be run using a generator or on solar power. The lab-in-a-box has features like online textbooks, open-source software and touchscreen computers that can provide quality IT education at a much-reduced cost along with easy access. It has overcome the challenges of power, space and infrastructure faced by schools in India, says Kamat.
Throwing down the gauntlet to encourage entrepreneurship in the space, Kapil Sibal, the Union minister for human resource development, showcased a Rs 1,500 access-cum-computing device, which is slated to be rolled out to over 11 crore children in rural and urban government schools. The device, which is powered by a sleek solar panel, is based on open source software, and allows web-based and video-tutorial based instruction for children.
Does that plug all the gaps to cater to the addressable rural education space? Rural education experts say, while ICT and corporate participation is providing a virtual workaround to traditional government supported programmes in spreading education in an environment where a majority of rural population continues to be underserved with infrastructure and basic amenities, unless major priorities such as hygienic sanitation, access to safe drinking water and access to basic healthcare are not provided, the government’s aim of universal education access will continue to leave behind the girl child, as well as the more socially and financially disadvantaged rural children.
debeshibakshi@mydigitalfc.com
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