The Unspoken aftermath of COVID-19 in India
India has experienced two waves of Covid-19 till now and the third wave is in talks. Health, Tourism, Business etc., suffered huge losses. The Government’s vaccination drive, incentives and schemes have really got the situation of the health sector under control. But there’s still a long road to travel. Talking about the roads, there’s one which needs to be taken and has been the “less travelled by” till now. It is the Education sector. Now before I start talking about it, there’s something you need to see.
The numbers themselves are scary enough to just tell how much the Education sector has been suffering till now. The Government reopened the schools for some classes in the earlier 2021 but it increased the number of infections in many states. Since Covid-19 started spreading it’s wrath globally, all the schools and colleges have switched to online teaching and is being continued this way. But the impacts of change in the mode of teaching is so deep and unspoken. There have been many schemes which helped in boosting the process of online teaching such as Punjab’s 92 crore Smart Phone scheme etc. where ministers, MLA’s handed over 20 phones each in various districts to kickstart the scheme. But there’s more to dig in!
A large number of families in India cannot afford such services to provide their children with all the latest technologies for their education. For a labor class family, buying a smart phone is a big decision for them financially. They work all day long so that they could have as what we say ‘do vakt ki roti’. Due to lockdown, many of the daily wage earners have migrated back to their home towns and villages with their children leaving behind everything to survive the hard times. Even the deserving and hardworking children with a passion to achieve something in life have to suffer because of their financial problems. Let me explain you through an example. There’s a labor class family. Both the father and the mother are working day and night to support their family. Now, their child is studying in a school where they have switched to online form of teaching, for which they need a smart phone with features that supports the working of online video chat applications which roughly costs around 12,000RS. This is a big financial decision for a labor class family because they have to use whatever they saved for future and work overtime because they want to support their child’s education in any way possible. Due to lockdown, unemployment really hit the lower class the most. Just think about there’s not one but millions of families like them who have been hit hard financially. The problem doesn’t end here. With only one phone in a family, child’s father or mother take away their mobile phones with them because they go out in the morning everyday to work and make a living and return in the evening with the hope of earning more the next day. Children of such families didn’t have any access to such facilities and were deprived of the education they wanted. Also, about the students who were able to study through their smart phones and laptops, they are suffering too and it’s impact will be seen over the next few years. Students have forgot all the basic calculations which is going to haunt them as they go higher in studies. It doesn’t seem like much of a problem now but the reports have shown that more than 90% of students studying in 2nd and 3rd class have forgot everything they studied through online classes. Parents have to do most of the part for the children studying in primary classes.
Talking about the effects of it, bullying has increased many times through online classes. Many students have bullied their teachers while they’re teaching online. 90% of teachers are teaching online for the first time. Teachers had to learn about such services and provide the education this generation should have the hunger of. But abusing our teachers, who are our saviours, isn’t something this generation should be a part of. Tamil Nadu had also released norms for online classes which had to be strictly followed. Bullying someone might be fun to a person but that someone’s mental health is affected so much that it can prove detrimental in the near future. I have seen this online bullying with teachers with my own eyes and I know how bad can it affect a teacher when all he/she is trying to adjust to the technologies so their students can study without any pressure.
CBSE had also released the result of classes 10th and 12th without conducting board exams. This shows how Covid-19 has altered lives of millions. Now think about the ongoing things related to online classes and what impact they’ll have in few years. Education in India is something which is not easy for a poor family to afford. It might have been an easy for big private schools but many of the small scale schools had to be shut down due to insufferable losses. A World Bank report estimated the monetary impact of school closures in India to be around $440 billion.
Below are some questions which need to be answered with solutions right away:-
- Where would the children of poor families go when they couldn’t afford to send their students to private schools?
- How will the students cover up in the tight schedule of online classes where learning isn’t as simple as it was offline?
- How will the government tackle the issues and problems when more big problems come in the way of education?
- How will the government recover the losses due to school closures?
- Are parents ready to send their students back to schools with a risk of their children getting infected?
The list would go on because the impact is unbearable. But it can be tackled. With the decrease in Covid-19 cases in India, many schools and colleges are reopening in a blended form(online and offline both). Vaccination drive in India is going at a pace and students vaccinated with both the doses are coming back to their respective schools and colleges. With the hope of no third wave, we should be moving forward with an aim to provide the best education to the students so that our nation would be called as a “Developed nation” in the future. Together, we will. Education sector has always undermined due to political or other reasons but say no more. It’s high time we take such decisions so as to become an inspiration and not a victim of such problems. I wrote all this because I have experienced all this, if not personally, but millions of them have. Padhega India, tabhi to Badhega India. Education is our fundamental right. Let’s not lose it!
