Indian Schools Go Online, But Most Students Still Offline

“Last week, Rita Bhoi from Balisahi village in the Cuttack district of the east Indian state of Odisha sold her gold earrings for INR 8,000 (US$107) to buy a smartphone that cost her INR 7,500 (US$100). “The earrings were given to me by my father when I got married,” she told VICE News. “I thought I’ll give it to my daughter when she gets married.”
Bhoi’s husband Gagan, a daily wage labourer, has been without work for three months because of the pandemic-triggered lockdown. Their only source of food is the free ration provided by the state government, and a loan of almost INR 50,000 (US$666) looms over them.
In March 2020, schools across India shut down just before the government-mandated nationwide lockdown to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. UNESCO estimates that the school closures affected 320 million Indian learners. Out of those, the poor have been disproportionately impacted not just by closures of schools, but the aggressive push by schools and states to introduce online classes.
India, a country of 1.3 billion people of which close to 70 percent lives in rural areas, had over 500 million smartphone users in December 2019, and is expected to have 829 million users by 2022. The latest data from India Cellular and Electronics Association estimates that by 2018, 25 percent of rural India had access to smartphones.”