“Where there is a will, there is way,” they say. This age-old proverb has proven true in the case of Maharashtra’s Mangaon village which has shown exemplary genius in making education accessible to all its students despite the limitations imposed by the pandemic and the lockdowns. This tiny Village In Maharashtra Sets A Standard In The Field of Online Education By Broadcasting The Classes on Local TV Channel, but in the state like Goa the students still have to walk miles to catch the network.
Using a completely refreshing and out-of-the-box approach, Mangaon has started its very own cable television broadcast for all its students. The broadcast is being organized for students right from class I to class X. There are about 1,400 students in this village, studying in four different schools and this is supposed to benefit all of them.
Maharashtra, which is the state worst hit by the pandemic has been under the most rigorous and frequent lockdowns ever since March last year. Schools, workplaces, and other activities have almost completely transitioned to online platforms. While in many places, the transition is complete, there are several others still dealing with the new changes.
Instead of leaving the students and families on their own to figure their problems out, the local authorities took prompt action to soothe their troubles. The Television Broadcast program was conceived specifically to ensure that no children of the village have to suffer from the lack of patchy or non-existent internet connection. This was a much-need move and the only solution that looked plausible.
Village sarpanch Raju Magdum said, “The parents were worried about the interruptions in internet connection and its effect on the education of their children. The gram panchayat decided to make classes available through live streaming with help from local cable networks.”
How this works is, teachers are videotaped conducting classes in the schools and this is telecast live on TV on one of the local channels. The first-ever telecast of this type, had as many as 700 TV sets across the village tuning in to the program. In this manner, the school community, the local authorities, and the families together are ensuring that students are not deprived of education.
As inspiring and optimistic as it may sound, the bitter fact remains that this example is, after all, an exception. Effects of the lockdown have applied to not just Mangaon but so many other villages and remote places in India. The people there have neither stellar infrastructure nor much financial caliber, on their own, and even as a community, to fully cope with these extreme conditions.
Naturally, many of them have witnessed widespread disparity and imbalances. Countless children have been left behind in the process of switching to online education; for in these other places, children have no one to turn to, unlike in Mangaon where all stakeholders came together to take initiative.
Take, for instance, the case of our very own Goa. Goan media was all about the suffering and struggle of Goan rural children owing to poor network. Comparisons are perhaps of little use, but one cannot overlook the fact that Goa being a smaller state, with a relatively more educated population had better chances at solving the issues being faced by its students. But that is far from reality.
Each day in the last month, newspapers have reported identical stories from Goan villages. Be it Kodal, Satrem, and Derode in Sattari district or Udden in Shiroda district, whether it is Canancona, Sanguem, or Villien, the situation is no different. Across the length and breadth of Goa, the only thing consistent is the indifference and negligence of the authorities.
Photographs of students sitting on the road under tarpaulin sheets under pellets of rain and strong winds so that they could better network made headlines. There was an equal number of instances of children traveling anywhere from 2 Km to 15 Km for want of better internet connection, sometimes starting their journey on foot each morning and at other times hunting for a ride, due to lack of adequate transport facilities.
As if that was not sufficient, there were apprehensive parents sharing how their children often walk through forest paths braving wild animals and antisocial elements, while others mount hillocks and high structures, hoping to attend their classes uninterrupted by sparse internet. Finally, a frustrated group of students in Valpoi protested outside the BSNL office when their numerous letters and repeated requests went unheard.
But none of this seemed to make any difference to the authorities. In fact, it is now, after one whole year into the online mode of education that a Union Education Ministry report stated that just 8.4% of the 827 government schools in Goa have an internet connection.
With the national average being 11.5%, Goa clearly lags far behind. This makes the state’s coverage for government schools on this parameter comparable to those in Bihar and Chhattisgarh (according to the Unified district information system for education (U-DISE) report, 2019-20).
But is it really a surprise? In July 2020, there were reports of a state government survey aimed at gauging the availability of internet connectivity and smartphones among school students across Goa. It was shockingly discovered that students of government schools in Goa were at a great disadvantage in this aspect.
It showed that 5,200-odd or 14% of students studying in all government schools in Goa do not have devices like smartphones. Availability of a decent network connection was also, therefore, very questionable. Moreover, between the category of students with no means and those who did have access to both internet and gadgets, were those students who had smartphones or tablets but a very unsteady internet connection.
All indications point to the fact that state and local authorities have been well aware of the poor state-of-affairs. The real question then is, why was no improvement made before sanctioning the commencement of online classes? Why was no action taken to alleviate this issue? The same drill has been repeated this year as well.
It is evident that the authorities have lacked a proactive approach and have instead decided to let the students fend for themselves. There is only so much that individual families and students can do on their own with such a lack of cooperation dragging them down. Is this the inconsideration young Goans should be subjected to?
