By Naimisha & Ausuf
2020, as a year would’ve made Thanos proud. It started off nice and slow with a teaser of World War 3, then nature was literally lit with the bushfires of Australia, then came the Delhi Riots, and finally, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived to make matters worse.
What’s next?
My heart mumbled. A newsletter came, which stated that university exams are postponed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. My pessimistic mind wasn’t too keen on celebrating it, but my inner child was already on cloud nine. My younger brother’s josh was also particularly high because he was getting promoted without even giving exams.
My inner child’s celebration was short-lived owing to the uncertainty and ample amount of questions running amok in my mind of how exactly universities are going to handle academics and examinations when a virus is literally waiting at our door, desperately waiting for us to come out in order to hold our respiratory system hostage.
Welcome to the unpleasant placement season of pandemic! Here no company wants another CV in their waiting box, no organization wants another set of skills to pay, Maybe, this time it’s not just you and me but also our LinkedIn profiles are being quarantined!
Hopelessly, surfing between google classrooms, hangouts, and zoom apps, wondering if I will be remembering all these theories when exams begin or questioning the very question ‘When will the exams begin?’
I am stuck with a fundamental illusion that while many students are fortunate enough to have the privileges of a laptop or a well to do smartphone, there also remains a large portion of the student fraternity who, far from attending online classes on Zoom aren’t even part of their class’s or department’s WhatsApp groups because they can’t even afford these gadgets. This chunk of students still rely on the traditional model of education and generally live in the heartlands where internet infrastructure is poor, which really raises this question, Is India really ready for an e-educational revolution?
The answer to this question will vary significantly across various strata of Indian society. For example, the urban student population which has largely benefited from the telecom revolution of the late 2010s, readily equipped with smartphones, computers, and inexpensive internet are more likely to be ready than the student population living in heartlands where benefits of the telecom revolution and speed of the internet are equally slow.
There still exists a plethora of infrastructural problems associated with the telecommunication and internet sectors, which has to be addressed in order to facilitate a pan-India e-educational revolution.
This pandemic has provided an opportunity to ramp up our efforts and bring an e-educational revolution that could possibly bring about an alternate way of imparting education and conducting exams.
Most Private Universities have already ventured and shifted to online mode because of current circumstances. Their shift was smooth owing to the privileged status of students studying there, but this will be particularly tricky for Public Universities that host students from every stratum of the society.
E-educational revolution, along with infrastructural and economical dimensions, also has to grapple with social issues.
In many off-campus colleges of Delhi University, the woman students even struggle hard to attend colleges, the concept of domestic work- patriarchal setups are yet prevalent in vivid corners of our education system.
On the other hand, in the 21st century we are propagating the schemes of ‘Beti bachao, Beti Padhao’ in such contexts imagining that every ‘Beti’ can prioritize domestic work over assignments or entrances or semesters over ‘Ghar ke kaam’ will be a fallacious argument to make. Talking to the elected secretary of Delhi University Student Union 2020, Ashish Lamba emphasized that he will write letters to the governing body suggesting for PDFs and Print handouts of notes to be made available for students. Realizing the grave economic recession there may be cuts in jobs this year and hence, he will try to coordinate with the placement cell on this issue for convincing companies to accommodate students for a later joining period, at least.
While even to date many students are awaiting their semester results that have been extremely late this academic session due to endless DUTA strikes, the fate of students remains unknown. Talking to Sahil Malik a student activist who is himself a student in the Law Faculty, Sahil believes that the academic session has been strongly affected due to DUTA strikes as assignments and internals could not be conducted on time and hence, we are lagging behind today.
It is not desirable to now conducting internals online as it would be mere open book tests, we could have utilized that time. Meanwhile, Sahil stressed that universities should come up with Skill Development courses that will help enhance the quarantined time period of students and that will prevent them from falling into clutches of depression or anxiety.
History stands as evidence that universities are a platform for inclusive education, while many universities are trying to bring digital education to students, it would be wrong to not critically analyze how much of this digitized knowledge can reach the migrant students, students coming from remote and backward sectors. Perhaps, post the pandemic, India must introspect on its educational advancement by reforming the class-privileged digitalized expectations.