Online Edu: Don’t overlook social inequality

In the age of lockdown, there doesn’t seem to be any alternative to classroom education other than online education. The impossibility of resuming real classes anytime soon is forcing universities and schools across the country to migrate to digital platforms. Some have already started preparations.

Online education is not entirely novel in several universities, with courses already attached to digital learning modules. However, against the current backdrop, those digital platforms may soon become a permanent virtual reality, albeit in divergent formats. Apex bodies like the University Grants Commission, and managements and private bodies across the country, have been seeking for a long time to introduce online learning platforms and stabilise their operation; the Covid-19 lockdown is definitely an opportunity for them.

In India, where policymaking is a monopoly of management and economics experts, the social costs involved in introducing new technologies are often overlooked. Innovative technology is a necessity to realise our developmental ambitions. However, a blind endorsement of technology may further aggravate existing social inequalities. One recent example, out of many, is the instance of starvation deaths in states like Jharkhand when ration cards were linked to the new biometric identity system called Aadhaar.

Similarly, in the case of online education, if serious attention is not paid to the cultural fabric of our society, it may result in further deepening the social divisions. As we treasure the latest technologies for higher productivity, efficiency, time-saving, etc., we also need to contemplate their suitability to our cultural-institutional frameworks.

Digital divide

One of the main disadvantages of our policy-making process is that it often fails to look beyond the requirements of the middle class, the main beneficiaries of technological transitions. Rarely do we address the difficulties of lower-class segments to adapt to such transitions. One sobering question in education through online platforms is, how do we address the digital divide, which is so deep and stark in our society. The access to digital technologies, and the ability to use them, is not uniformly distributed across our cultural-spatial locations. People in rural and tribal areas with less or no data coverage or the lower-class sections living in the urban-semi urban centres are examples of such categories of populations. With online education, the chances of students from these sections falling outside the ambit of the very system of education are very high.

The sheer demographic size of these sections explains the seriousness of the digital divide. According to a recent report, India has close to 451 million people using the internet. Second only to China, India still has more than 60% of its population outside the reach of the internet. Which means that digital platforms in India are currently unable to address the educational needs of students from sections consisting of more than 650 million people. Thus, shifting to online platforms can be extremely harmful as the already existing socio-economic and other cultural divisions between these sections of population may increase beyond proportions. One needs to keep in mind that educational benefits have a direct influence on the employment prospects of students and leave a lasting impact on their social status.

Language, gender

Even those for whom the internet is within reach may not be able to participate in online education classes in an equal manner. The medium of online education is primarily English and the technologies demand some level of proficiency in that language. Digital education platforms are also designed primarily in English and, except for some main vernaculars like Hindi, Malayalam, Marathi, online educational materials hardly exist in India in non-English formats. The chances of students with poor English being left out of digital platforms are very high.

Added to this is the question of technical competence that can intervene at all levels of education, starting from admission. In a recent discussion, an online education provider confessed that it leaves out those who have poor technical skills, including the basic skill of using a computer keyboard. For example, the online assessments are not only tests of the students’ knowledge but also of their English proficiency and typing speed.

A related issue is that of gender and internet usage. Statistics reveal massive gender differences in internet use. The India Internet Report 2019, published by IAMAI, shows that the national male-female ratio in internet usage is 67:33. That is, the number of females using internet is a little less than half of the total number of males using it. Language, gender, technical competence all operate at the basic level of one’s use of the internet.

In the absence of serious interventions from the government to minimise the digital divide in its multiple dimensions, online education as a sole platform can do irreparable damage to the principle of equality. The effectiveness of digital platforms vis-a-vis face-to-face learning is still a debatable topic, but even if that were to be settled in favour of the digital platforms – as the Covid-19 pandemic is causing us to per force, if only for reasons of practicality, we will still need to ask deeper and critical questions about the medium in light of the structural realities persistent in our society.

(The writer teaches Sociology at CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru)