Lack of smartphone and TV facilities are keeping the poor away from obtaining education

Apart from bringing life to a standstill world over, the coronavirus pandemic has led a lot of hiccups in the daily routines of people. Professional's had to shift to a Work-from-home culture, in-person meetings shifted to virtual platforms, but most of all students were forced to stay home and study via digital platforms. With the huge digital divide between the rural and urban populations, the rich and the poor, etc, a shift to the digital medium has brought about new challenges for the students as well as the parents.

Hyderabad:Coronavirus has created many hiccups in our day-to-day life. While one is the loss of employment and hindrance to the livelihoods, the other is the struggle being faced by the parents and children for their education!. This is a problem not just with the poor but even the middle-class parents are facing the same problem. It is becoming difficult for such families to buy smartphones or tablets for their children for online education, furnishing TVs and facilitating internet connection. While the government is using the television medium to impart knowledge, the students still have to rely on smartphones to do their homework and clear their doubts. In such a situation, the parents will have to buy smartphones for their children while others are buying TVs. There are those who are constantly being pressured by their children to buy phones, whether they need to or not.

“WhatsApp groups were set up as per the directions of the Department of Education. In it, we send homework, instructions, and suggestions. Students are asked to do homework and send the photos of answered sheets, back again. This practice is a must especially for those students who are studying in 7th and 10th class. This is the main reason for the parents of such students to specifically buy the smartphones for their children”, many teachers told 'Eenaadu'. They further shared that there are those who could not afford TVs/phones and hence are moving away from lessons. Teachers' union leaders agree that this is an unbearable burden for poor, middle and lower-middle-class families who have lost their jobs due to Corona. It is said to be reminiscent of the proverb 'Adding Fuel to the Fire’. In addition to it are the struggles of the students who climb trees and mounds with problems such as lack of technical internet signals and lack of speed.

The following is the situation in some schools ...

* Adilabad District Utnooru Zilla Parishad High School has 32 students in 10th class 'A' section and 17 of them have smartphones. Among these students, only about 10 people could afford to purchase these smartphones in the first week of this month.

* Asifabad zone Komaram Bheem district, Kerameri Mandal has a primary school in which there are 204 students in the 3rd, 4th and 5th classes. Amongst them, around 30 students have purchased new smartphones after the 1st of this month. Those who couldn’t afford to buy these phones attended the classes being played on the Television in the Panchayat Office.

* Muralikrishna, the president of the Medchal District Gazetted Principals' Association, has contacted representatives of the Rotary Club, bringing the fact to the notice of the members, that there are many people in the Medchal district who cannot afford internet data recharge despite having phones. Post this, the Rotary Club helped in recharging data for 3 months to the phones of 40 students at Kaukoor High School.

* Ankoli High School of Adilabad‌ Rural Zone has 327 students out of which 37 do not have Television sets. Only 151 of these children had phones.

Digital classes have been initiated from the 1st of July, for classes 3 to 10. From that day on, around 1,91,768 students have been attending the classes through smartphones and laptops, as per the statistics of the Education department. That number has recently risen to 2,19,285 which is an increase of 27,517. This makes it clear that purchases of phones/other accessories have also increased to that extent. An unofficial estimate is that government school students must have bought at least a million smartphones across the state in the past 15 days. If we estimate that a single smartphone costs Rs. 7,000, the entire purchases made in the market in these 15 days amounts to Rs. 70 crores!!