Digital Technology - for Education for Poor or for Bullet Trains?

The problem of poverty and lack of education exists not only in villages of India, but also in metropolitan cities like the capital New Delhi, where people live in slums next to wealthy areas.

Digital education softwares can be made available to the poor children for school level learning.

Whither India?

Contrary to the rising economy image of India, majority of Indians are still living in poverty. Especially those who live in villages are deprived of food, water, health and educational facilities, a market place where they can buy things of necessities. Even the metropolises of India are not free from poverty and lack of basic amenities.

India is known for its advancements in the IT sector. Indian IT professionals are running significant enterprises across the world. If the government wishes, it can use the IT advantage of Indian professionals, collate together the new inventive methods of school learning, and build a low-cost educational system for the school children all over India, so that poor children who drop out of school can be brought into the educational system at least till the high school level.

Usually, arguments are given about how much it will cost and whether India has the resources to implement this IT-intensive schooling system poor sections of the country. However, in such a scenario, it is shocking to see that both the previous government and this government have gone for an exorbitantly expensive bullet train network for some of the metropolitan cities of India, when these bullet trains will run only 2-3 minutes faster than the existing Shatabdi and Rajdhani express trains.

UNICEF Report

• 80% children drop out of school in India.
• Half of the children in India are malnourished.
• Mid-day meal doesn’t solve the problem, as the children don’t get wholesome food.

World Bank Report

• World’s one-fourth malnourished children still live in India.
• World’s one-third poor people still live in India.

The Burden of the Bullet Train Project

The last government signed an MoU under Dr. Manmohan Singh with the Japanese Premier to bring bullet trains to India. This will incur a loan of billions of Dollars to the Indian taxpayers, who will have to bear 20% of the cost anyway. India will go under a debt of Rs. 97,636 crores to Japan, according to an IIM-Ahmedabad research. In a country where millions of people live without essential amenities of life, this seems like an enormous extravaganza. Besides, this will plunge India into a never-ending downward whirlpool of loan of Billions of Dollars, at a time when inflation is on the rise. It would be more prudent to spend only a fraction of this amount on providing school level education to children who are dropping out of school because of poverty; and to provide nutritious food to them, instead of mid-day meal that is not wholesome.

Do we really need bullet trains that run only 2-3 minutes faster than the Shatabdi Express by taking billions of Dollars as loan at these costs, when hundreds of millions of people live without food, education, health, water and electricity in India?

• The Mumbai-Ahmedabad route of 500 km, will cost Rs 370 billion (US$8.04 billion) to build and to make a profit, passengers will have to be charged Rs 5 per km (US$0.11/km). Delhi to Amritsar one-way, a distance of 450 km, will cost about Rs 2000 (US$43.48).At US$15–22 million per km, cost estimates are in line with US$18 million per km of the recently completed Wuhan-Guangzhou HSR line in China.
• The Mumbai - Ahmedabad line is expected to cost Rs 650 billion.

How can IT Softwares Help in Spreading School Education?

The government can build a system to use educational software already available in the market to build a low-cost educational network across the country, especially meant for the poor families in cities and in villages. This will go a long way in raising the educational level of Indian children. Following are some of the learning softwares that can be used for this purpose –

• For Language Learning - Oréll Digital Language lab helps the students to learn not only a major language such as English, but also trains them in all major areas of communication – speaking, reading, writing and listening. The Indian IT professionals can expand this softwares to cover the Indian languages, so that Indian children can learn not only English and foreign languages, but also Hindi and other major languages of India. The poor children can be linked to this learning system to acquire a high-level language and communication skill.
• For Maths – Heymath has developed mathematical learning softwares for CBSE, ICSE and GCSE syllabi from classes 1^st to 10^th The government can again use this software to integrate the poor children into learning mathematical skills.
• For Sciences – Edukite has softwares to teach Sciences and Maths in an interesting, interactive environment to school children. The government has to make provisions to interlink the poor children to learn Sciences and Maths through this software.
• For Geography – Mapline has evolved softwares to help children learn about world geography and create maps of geographical, political, environmental and other variables-based regions. This kind of software can be helpful to spread school level education in India among poor children.

Infrastructure that Needs to be Developed –

• The government has to work to provide electricity and computer technology – probably laptops or tablets in all areas of India, regardless of whether they are small villages, towns or large cities. All the people of India should have access to electricity and learning computer systems. Of course providing electricity to all areas of India is a monumental task. But the government has to find ways to generate electricity and connect poor children’s laptops and tablets with it.
• The poor families should have access to cheap electricity. It should not be so exorbitantly priced that they can’t afford it. For this, alternative energy-resources have to be popularized, so that electricity is reserved for connecting to computers in learning environment in these poor homes.
• Simultaneously, basic amenities such as a healthy accommodation, food, clean water and access to market for purchasing their goods of daily necessities should be made available to all.
• They should be able to generate income for themselves using their immediate environment without having to migrate to metropolises. India can no longer afford the congestion and pollution in its metropolises because people in small towns and villages keep on migrating to large cities in search of income.

On the surface, all this sounds very Utopian and perhaps not achievable. But we must remember that developed countries such as Japan and the US, first made these basic amenities of life available to their people before they began to build bullet trains. And they certainly didn’t take billions of Dollars of loan to build their bullet trains. A truly developed society first makes all its people equal in access to resources, amenities and rights instead of entering into a blind race for technological acquisition. Especially this is not needed when we already have fast trains that have been proven to be only 2-3 minutes slower than these bullet trains that are a drain on the Indian economy.

If at all India has to spend billions of Dollars, it should be in the direction of developing its underdeveloped areas in both cities and villages. We are fortunate in that we have such IT experts who can evolve the technology to provide school education to all children of India. The government has to work with them and to provide the supporting infrastructure to all people of India.