Education Ministry report: At least 40% school children in 7 large states lack access to digital devices

 

The report, Initiatives by the School Education Sector in 2020-21, shows that the digital divide has hit some states disproportionately hard, while a few may have coped well due to adequate availability of smartphones and television sets.

BETWEEN 40% and 70% school-going children in seven large states – Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand – do not have access to digital devices, according to a report prepared by the Union Ministry of Education that documents the response to challenges thrown up by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The report, Initiatives by the School Education Sector in 2020-21, shows that the digital divide has hit some states disproportionately hard, while a few may have coped well due to adequate availability of smartphones and television sets. However, the picture remains incomplete in the absence of data from states such as Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, and questionable claims like that of Rajasthan that it does not have students without digital access.

The report, which was made public on Wednesday, has been prepared based on data shared by 22 of 28 states, and seven out of eight Union Territories. The state-wise interventions to bridge the divide also reflect the same disparity – with some like Tamil Nadu claiming to have distributed 5.15 lakh laptops among students, as against 42 mobile phones by the Bihar government.

In absolute numbers, prepared on the basis of surveys of various sample sizes by the states and UTs in 2020 and 2021, 29 crore students, including 14.33 crore in Bihar, were found without access to digital devices. “The ‘new normal’ may also have a huge impact on the learning levels for almost all children; learning loss may be a reality for many children,” the report says.

Among the states to have responded, those having a very high share of students without digital access include Madhya Pradesh (70%), Bihar (58.09%), Andhra Pradesh (57%), Assam (44.24%), Jharkhand (43.42%), Uttarakhand (41.17%) and Gujarat (40%). Among the better placed states and UTs are Delhi with around 4% students without access, Kerala 1.63%, Tamil Nadu 14.51%.

A look at some of the findings of the report:

Assam: The state reported 3,10,6255 students with no digital device. According to Unified District Information System for Education data, it has 7,01,5898 students across 65,907 schools. While the state did not distribute devices, it organised home visits by teachers, and launched a toll-free helpline for students to clear academic doubts and address psycho-social issues.

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Andhra Pradesh: The state surveyed 29.34 lakh out of the total 81.36 lakh students in May 2021 and found 2,01,568 students have no cellphone access. Parents of 10.22 lakh have phones that can only make calls, and 4.57 lakh students have access to phones with no mobile data. It found that 3.88 lakh students don’t have access to TV. Only 5,752 students have laptops. The state has so far distributed 2,850 laptops and 18,270 tabs, and is planning a toll-free number.

Bihar: The state, which has 2.46 crore students, reported that 1.43 crore children have no access to digital devices. In terms of interventions to bridge the gap, it gave cellphones to 42 students, and plans to provide tablets to 250 schools. With assistance of UNICEF, mobile vans equipped with TV, videos, math game, and toys were deployed across seven districts, with special focus on Mahadalit/Mushahar communities.

Gujarat: A UNICEF survey of 12,000 schools found 40% of the students did not have access to smartphones and Internet. The state has 1.14 crore students across 54,629 schools. To bridge the gap, the state government distributed blended learning modules, and launched an IVRS helpline. Around 11,200 devices were provided to students and 40,000 to teachers.

Jharkhand: Out of 74.89 lakh students, 32.52 lakh do not have digital access. The state informed the Centre that tablets had been provided to schools and cluster resource centres in 2018-19. As the number of android phones in remote tribal-dominated villages is “very low”, the state tied up with UNICEF to develop modules of home-based learning and started mohalla schools in remote areas.

Madhya Pradesh: An education department survey of 98 lakh of the state’s 1.57 crore students found that 70% of them do not have access to smartphones. The April 2021 survey said 53 lakh have access to TVs, and 57 lakhs to radio sets. Among the interventions listed are mohalla classes and regular teacher-parent interactions over the phone. A radio school programme was also launched immediately after the national lockdown.

Uttarakhand: State authorities surveyed 5.20 lakh out of 23.39 lakh schoolchildren and found 2.14 lakh do not have access to digital devices for online learning. It proposes to distribute more than 35,000 e-books to school students. The state also attempted community outreach to keep in touch with such students, distribute worksheets among them and also took the help of community radio in five districts

Driving home a point

The Education Ministry report once again spotlights the grim reality of differential access to education, made starker by the pandemic-induced disruption and the consequential digital divide. The official figures also validates the concerns expressed by non-profits working in the education sector. The report also highlights the interventions at various levels to bridge the divide, but one cannot emphasise enough on the need to scale up the efforts.

Source: Indian Express, 8/10/21

There is more to the evictions in Assam than the demands of ‘development’

 

Sanjib Baruah writes: Evictions have long been an explosive subject due to the region’s demographic and political history, as well as the displacement and dispossession caused by riverbank erosion.

Encroachment of land designated as “government lands”, “reserve forests” or “grazing lands” and the eviction of “encroachers” have long been a staple of politics in Assam. The recent evictions in Sipajhar are in line with this history, but they also stand strikingly apart in significant ways.

Encroachments and evictions are not unique to Assam. But they are more common and widespread — and they span the urban-rural divide — because of certain peculiarities of the region’s physical landscape and political and demographic history.

Assam regularly loses large swathes of land to riverbank erosion. Unlike the annual floods that attract significant media attention — though yielding little by way of a long-term flood hazard management strategy — riverbank erosion is less dramatic, and it barely makes news. Significant numbers of people are regularly displaced and dispossessed by riverbank erosion. An article by an IAS officer, Aranyak Saikia, that draws on his experience as assistant commissioner of a flood-prone district in Assam is quite telling (‘Not just floods, Assam needs an urgent, long-term strategy on erosion’, IE, September 12, 2021). Riverbank erosion uproots people from their land — their most important asset — forcing them to relocate. Some of the displaced, he observes, seek refuge in government lands, protected forests, or wildlife sanctuaries. “While undocumented migration has been a historical problem in Assam,” writes Saikia, “today a large fraction of the encroachments are also by families, uprooted by erosion”.

For more than a century Assam and Northeast India have been a settlement frontier attracting massive immigration from the rest of the subcontinent. While the colonial government that pictured Assam as a wasteland initially encouraged immigration and settlement by peasants from deltaic eastern Bengal to raise revenue, it also introduced the line system demarcating areas where immigrants could settle. But the colonial state found it difficult to defend the no-occupation areas against the pressure of immigration and many forest reserves, grazing reserves and tribal belts had to be de-reserved. The state, in effect, accepted its failure to prevent settlement in those spaces. This process has continued in old and new forms since decolonisation.

In recent decades, internal factors such as riverbank erosion and development-induced displacement — not immigration — have been the primary sources of demographic pressure on public lands. For example, Assam’s present capital complex in Dispur was built in the 1970s after the “de-tribalisation” of land belonging to a tribal belt. Like those displaced by riverbank erosion, those displaced by development too find their way into government lands and reserve forests, turning these land-use designations into little more than legal fictions.

It is hardly surprising that while officials like to present the eviction of encroachments in the apparently neutral language of the law, it has been an intensely political subject.

Evictions became an explosive political issue in the 1980s. One of the demands of the Assam movement (1979-85) was the eviction of non-tribals from the tribal belts. The All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the All Bodo Students Union (ABSU) were behind this demand. One of the clauses of the Assam Accord stipulated the prevention of encroachment and the eviction of unauthorised encroachers from public lands and tribal belts and blocks. But when the first Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) government tried to implement this clause, it quickly learned that the “unauthorised encroachers” are a motley group of people that included many Bodos and other tribals as well.

It was a costly political mistake for the AGP. It was the single major factor that alienated the Bodos from the ethnic Assamese political society and radicalised the Bodo movement. From a movement focused on Bodo culture and the deprivation of educational and employment opportunities, the focus of the Bodo movement changed to the demand for a separate state, captured by the slogan, “Divide Assam 50-50”.

Assam has come a long way since then. The current state government of Assam does not take any political chances. Evictable encroached areas are carefully identified and targeted for development projects, which apparently involves foreknowledge of the alleged encroachers to be evicted. Their religious and ethnic affiliations appear to feature in the design of the project. The development project is fast-tracked to start immediately after the physical eviction is completed by the police, bulldozers, and elephants.

In her budget speech to the state Assembly in July, Finance Minister Ajanta Neog spoke of an “experiment” to “remove encroachers from more than 77,420 bighas of land” in the Garukhuti area of Sipajhar. A committee of legislators was formed “to lead the agricultural initiatives for development of agriculture and allied activities”. The project’s goal, she claimed, was to provide livelihood opportunities to the area’s “indigenous youth”.

The so-called experiment was fast-tracked in an unparalleled manner. The state government had already identified a group of farmers to form part of a Multipurpose Agricultural Producer Organisation. There was no explanation for why none of the alleged encroachers could be included among the project’s potential beneficiaries.

The government, she said, had already deployed an advance party of the Indian Army’s 134 battalion of the Ecological Task Force (ETF) to undertake “massive afforestation activities” in the evicted area; and a veterinary expert team from Gujarat was already in place to oversee a pilot project for the introduction of the Gir cow to the area.

The local media reported that the committee of legislators overseeing the project had “camped in the Gorukhuti area to monitor the eviction drive”. On the day of the eviction, the committee chairman said it had engaged 22 tractors to till the land.

Development has been aptly called “a concept of monumental emptiness” since it can mean just about anything. Therefore critical scholars of development have long argued that it is crucial to ask, “what development does, who does it, and whom it actually benefits”. It is hard to think of a better case to illustrate this argument than Assam’s new “experiment” with eviction for development.

This column first appeared in the print edition on October 8, 2021 under the title ‘Eviction and development’. The writer is Professor of Political Studies at Bard College, New York.

Source: 8/10/21

Quote of the Day

 

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.”
Stephen Hawking

“ज्ञान का सबसे बड़ा शत्रु अज्ञान नहीं है, बल्कि ज्ञान का मिथ्याभास है।”
स्टीफन हॉकिंग

Tips to keep in mind when selecting a certification course

 

Practical over theoretical: A common question often asked is: does certifications guarantee a job? Here are some tips to keep in mind when selecting a certification course.

There is a long-standing view that the more certifications one has, the higher the chances of a successful career. Earlier, a good education was linked to a successful life. While this may have been true in the past, today, organisations want people to showcase their skills, not just their certificates.

Experience vs certification

The main thing to remember is that certifications no longer guarantees one a job. To put that into perspective, think about this: If you’ve been looking for a job online, when was the last time you saw “ must be certified”? and how many times have you seen “ must have experience”? This is proof that employers don’t always care about your certificates. Here’s why:

First, companies today need you to be ready before you get the job. They want someone who can dive straight in and go with the flow, as they don’t have time to train or groom recruits. A certification does not show them the candidate’s skills.

Second, a certification usually covers a generic area of learning. For instance, someone may have a certificate in Data Science, but the company may need someone who understands the base base, cloud, and related areas for them to be effective.

Retention and application gap

There is usually a gap of around three to six months between certification and getting a job. This means that you would have lost some of what you learned, and cannot expect to apply yourself completely to the job. As learning evaporates rapidly, certification is not equal to practical hands-on experience.

Fast technological changes

Given the speed at which technology is changing, the knowledge gained today could be obsolete or outdated in a year or two. Someone who completes a software course will be stuck with a piece of valueless paper when the company rolls out a new version. On the other hand, learning on the job as it evolves will not only keep you up to date but also helps you to develop other skills.

Thus, it becomes clear that hands-on experience will always trump a certificate. So it makes more sense to develop a skill set that can be used to get a job rather than gain theoretical knowledge that offers you no such guarantee.

The writer is Founder of BridgeLabz

Narayan Mahadevan

Source: The Hindu, 2/07/21

Universities are key in educating the young

 

While Central universities are doing well, few State universities stand out

While we have highlighted the importance of introducing humanities and social sciences in the IITs, the roles that universities and colleges play in educating their youngsters need to be pointed out. During the British colonial rule, while on one hand they charged exorbitant amounts as taxes for their revenue, there were some academicians too, who set up colleges and universities in the Bombay, Madras and Bengal Presidencies. In Bombay, they set up a regular academic college, and medical and law colleges. In Madras, they set up the Madras Presidency College in 1840, and in Bengal the Calcutta Presidency College in 1817.

All these offered quality and contemporary education. In addition, Christian missionaries also started some colleges in Delhi, undivided Punjab, Madras and Assam. Notable among these is the Christian Medical College at Vellore, which continues to offer world-class clinical practice and research to this day.

Royal initiatives

Quite besides these are the schools and colleges started by the Maharajas and Princely State Kings across India, particularly in the South. They have been the bedrock of imparting knowledge and wisdom, history, geography, and religions, over the last century. They have produced scholars, historians, writers and poets, civil servants, judges, chief ministers, governors and Presidents of India, and also M.S. Swaminathan of the Green Revolution and M. Visvesvaraya, the famous dam builder, and also the Nobel Prize winners (C.V. Raman, S Chandrasekhar and most recently Venky Ramakrishnan who is an alumnus of the century-old M.S. University Vadodara).

Outstanding institution

One outstanding institution founded in 1909 at Bangalore through the joint efforts of J.N. Tata and the Maharaja of Mysore is the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), which has been spearheading research in science and technology from the very beginning. Outstanding research in genetics, molecular and cell biology, and protein structure and function has been going on from the very beginning. In recent times, IISc has become world-famous for its achievements in computer science and software technology. Thanks to the series of books on this subject by Dr. V. Rajaraman (which has been the Bible for thousands of students) and the investment by Shri. N.R. Narayanamurthy, who founded Infosys Foundation, India has become a world-leader in software. They have made many graduates from IITs and universities to turn to this area and flock to Silicon Valley in California for jobs, and do very well there.

Moving on to two Central Universities at Delhi, namely, Delhi University with its North and South campuses, and Jawaharlal Nehru University or JNU, we find quite notably that apart from their proven expertise in the areas of economics, humanities and social sciences, they have been doing remarkably well in science and biotechnology. The North Campus has been a forerunner in botany and plant sciences, and the South Campus in medical and biotechnology. And JNU, apart from its distinction in economics (Prof. Utsa Patnaik, who estimated how the British Empire impoverished India by 500 trillion dollars to become the richest Empire in the world), has also an active genetics and biotechnology group (Prof. Anand Ranganathan) that works on TB and Malaria, thus protecting us from these diseases.

But, alas, none of the 400+ State universities successfully stand out in their achievements – be it in language and literature, economics, technology and its use. The lone exception may be Punjab University which has come to the service of the community through its excellent rice production, successful fight against swarms of locusts, and also in the history of the Punjabi language. We have already referred to the work being done at the Jadavpur and Presidency Universities at Kolkata, and also the Osmania University at Hyderabad, in certain areas of science and technology, besides language, literature and economics should be mentioned.

Private universities

Recently, several non-profit private universities have been started and are doing excellent service in software sciences (Azim Premji University), genetics, molecular biology and virology, sociology and history (Ashoka University), and SRM University in Chennai and Amaravati. May there be more such private and non-governmental universities!

dbala@lvpei.org

Source: The Hindu, 2/10/21

Our

Road accidents can be reduced

 

Public discourse, improving infrastructure can help

Fifty-one passengers of an overcrowded bus died in an accident on the morning of February 16 when it fell into a canal near Sarda Patan village in Sidhi district, Madhya Pradesh. A griha pravesh (house-warming) ceremony for the beneficiaries of one lakh houses constructed under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana in Bhopal, which was to be attended virtually by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, was cancelled due to the incident. Two days earlier, fourteen persons were killed when a minivan they were travelling in hit a divider on a National Highway (NH) near Madarpur village in Kurnool district, Andhra Pradesh. The van carrying 18 passengers was on its way to Ajmer in Rajasthan from Chittoor, when the driver lost control and hit the divider, tumbling on the other side of the road where a speeding truck crashed into it.

According to a study conducted by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, 1,51,113 persons were killed and 4,51,361 injured in road accidents across the country in 2019. NHs and State Highways, which account for about 5% of the total road length, claimed 61% of the deaths related to accidents. Around 35,606 deaths were reported on the NHs, which come under the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI).

Speaking at a webinar organised by the International Road Federation on February 9, Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari said India topped the fatality figures in road accidents in the world, with 415 deaths each day. While commending Tamil Nadu for taking effective road safety measures that had resulted in the reduction of road accidents by 38% and deaths by 54%, he asked other States to emulate Tamil Nadu.

It is small wonder that he actively pursued the Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Act, 2019, with the well-intentioned motive of bringing down the death rate due to road accidents by 50% by 2020. This was agreed to by all participating nations in the United Nations Brasilia Declaration, of which India was a signatory. Though the number of deaths due to accidents declined to 1.20 lakh in 2020 due to COVID-19, Mr. Gadkari shifted the deadline to 2025.

But the steep hike in the fines imposed for traffic violations in the Act was met with stiff opposition, with some States dismissing it as too harsh and, hence, not willing to implement it. What seems to have been ignored while drafting the law was the fact that a good number of those driving vehicles to earn their livelihood were from economically poor backgrounds. West Bengal decided not to implement the new law and continued with the West Bengal Motor Vehicle Rules, 1989.

The Madras High Court recently struck down the April 6, 2018 notification of the Union Government wherein the speed limit was hiked to 120 and 100 km/hour on expressways and highways, respectively. This was done as 66.7% of accidents was attributed to overspeeding in 2017, 55.73% in 2018 and 64.4% in 2019.

Studies carried out by various organisations have also come out with the causes for accidents and ways to curb them. The Accident Research Cell of the Delhi Traffic Police carried out an analysis of accidents and created a database that facilitates the formulation of policies to prevent accidents. While probing an accident that led to the death of former Union Rural Development Minister Gopinath Munde in New Delhi, the cell concluded that hedges along a road obstructed the visibility of drivers coming from the other direction. After the hedges were pruned, the stretch became free from accidents.

While the strict enforcement of traffic safety laws would go a long way, educating citizens about the impact of accidents on the kin of the victims through public discourse could help in reducing accidents. Improving road infrastructure with coordinated efforts by the police and civic authorities, identification of black spots that are prone to accidents and deploying an adequate number of police personnel, particularly during peak hours, could bring down accident rates. Highway patrols with police personnel trained in first aid and ambulances every 10 km could also help save precious lives.

M.P. Nathanael is Inspector-General of Police (retd.),
Source: The Hindu, 7/10/21

Why India needs an urbanisation policy

 

Durga Shanker Mishra, O P Agarwal write: A policy is needed to guide the planning and management of cities towards enabling India’s growth ambitions and also giving its residents a good quality of life, in a sustainable manner.

Cities are drivers of economic growth. As India urbanises, it must ensure that its cities offer a decent quality of life and facilitate job creation. These imperatives are fundamental to India’s ambitions of becoming a five trillion-dollar economy by 2025 and a 10 trillion-dollar economy by 2030.

From a population of 377 million in 2011, Indian cities are projected to house 870 million people by 2050, according to the UN’s projections — by far the highest among all nations. Delhi is likely to become the world’s most populous urban agglomeration by 2030, surpassing Tokyo. Clearly, a major demographic transformation is taking place.

Notwithstanding their criticality, cities face several challenges today. Inadequate affordable housing has meant that almost one-sixth of the urban population lives in slums. Water supply is unreliable. Mountains of solid waste sit on the fringes of our cities. Poor drainage, congested roads and deteriorating air quality are other challenges. For our growth ambitions to succeed, not only do these gaps have to be filled, but even greater needs, necessitated by the growing population, have to be accommodated. Estimates by a high-powered expert committee and by the McKinsey Global Institute indicated in 2011-12 that nearly Rs 39-60 lakh crore are to be invested in urban infrastructure in the next 30 years. These amounts are outside the range of what the public budget can support.

The need is for a well-thought-out urbanisation policy to guide the planning and management of cities towards accommodating and enabling India’s growth ambitions and also assuring its residents a good quality of life, in a sustainable manner. In this piece, we highlight some of the key issues that such a policy should address.

First, how large and dense should our cities be? Should they house 35-40 million people or limit themselves to 2-3 million? Large cities offer agglomeration economies but are complex to manage. Dense cities are harbingers of infrastructure-related economies but are vulnerable to the spread of disease, as evident from the Covid-19 pandemic. A proper balance between agglomeration economies and manageability as well as density and distance will hold the key in determining the right size for our cities. A way around this is a kind of decentralised urbanisation where multiple cities are clustered into growth regions. These would facilitate agglomeration economies and yet be of a manageable size. The Paris region offers an excellent example, with several townships within its ambit. Services like metro rail are provided at the regional level but local roads and primary schools are the responsibility of local governments.

The second issue concerns finances. Resources other than the public budget need to be tapped. Capital markets are an obvious choice but involving them would require pricing basic services in a manner that allows a reasonable return on investments. High prices will make services unaffordable. How does one resolve this conflict? Monetising land assets is an option. More efficient service delivery through the private sector is another. Should cities continue to depend on grants from the state or central governments or should they raise a larger share of its needs, for example by improving property tax collections? Should central finances support specific types of investments or should there be more flexible supporThird, urban dwellers should be able to live, work and play safely and happily. India has boasted of well-planned cities from time immemorial. Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa have been role models for the rest of the world. The country must focus on good urban planning, instead of prioritising construction. Decisions on what to build need to emerge from a good plan, not in isolation. Planning must be dynamic enough to adjust to a city’s growth.

Fourth, should the planning boundary be limited to a city’s political and administrative boundary or should it encompass regional linkages? There are strong economic linkages between cities and their rural hinterland. There are linkages between multiple cities in a region as well as between cities and peri-urban areas. Should these interdependencies not be leveraged? Should the land-use plan for a city be divorced from a regional economic plan or be guided by it?

Fifth, we cannot afford to lose sight of sustainability. Despite having 18 per cent of the world population, India has only 2.5 per cent of the world’s landmass and 4 per cent of the world’s freshwater. Hence, global standards of land and water use may be too generous for us. Resource efficiency should be integral to urban planning.

Sixth, the challenge of climate change is upon us. A large share of our future carbon emissions will be in cities. Fortunately, our cities are still growing, and we are well placed to guide them into a low-carbon growth path. Energy-efficient buildings, sustainable building materials, clean energy, water harvesting, segregation of waste, electric mobility, public transport, walking and cycling are sustainable practices that need to be mainstreamed into urban planning. Building resilience to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change will also be critical.

Seventh, developments in technology that make it easier to work remotely will test older paradigms of office-based work. This work culture could change travel patterns and the need for transport infrastructure. An urbanisation policy should take cognisance of future mobility patterns. Increasingly, travel patterns are getting limited to shorter distances, requiring more non-motorised transport infrastructure rather than high-speed systems better suited to longer trips.

A sound urbanisation policy will guide how the growing urban population lives, works, and plays in India’s cities of the future. Such a policy is the need of the hour and cannot be delayed.

This column first appeared in the print edition on October 7, 2021 under the title ‘Designing the post-Covid city’. Mishra is secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, and Agarwal is CEO, World Resources Institute India. 

Source: Indian Express, 7/10/21