By Arun Nigavekar Jun 02 2015
Tags: Op-ed
During the one year that he has been at the helm, the prime minister has taken a deep interest in domains that change the lives of families in rural, semi-urban and urban areas. Slowly, this has begun showing its impact and, perhaps, in another year’s time we may well witness a positive change in the lives of those staying in our smaller cities.
One such move is the pradhan mantri jan dhan yojana (PMJDY), a mission run with a lot of zeal. It is taken very seriously by the PMO, and reportedly, there are con-calls every Wednesday between officials and heads of financial institutions to keep track of weekly targets. Almost every bank across the country is focusing on three aspects —jan dhan account, aadhaar card and mobile banking cumulatively called JAM (jan dhan, aadhaar and mobility). The linking of aadhaar with bank accounts through RuPay card will ensure that people get the subsidies easily.
Today, banking is the biggest user of technology, given its massive customer base awaiting mobility for the ease of banking. There were days when banking ledgers were printed through electro-magnetic machines, and later, by posting machines. But now, the entire banking operation is virtually paperless, with customers hardly visiting banks for any kind of transaction. Newer innovations are taking place in the industry, ensuring best-in-class facilities for customers, thus leading the industry towards modernisation every day.
What is happening in banking and industry is now being tried in education as well, but with a low push. Indeed, by using technology positively and effectively, the higher education sector can see a big change in respect of number enhancement as well as quality and utility of the knowledge gained in various domains. The process of sensible and acceptable blending of face-to-face learning and technology-enhanced classroom teaching is making the learning process more innovative.
Implementing IT or ICT in tier II or tier III cities isn’t such a challenge any more. People today are tech savvy, and almost everyone has a smartphone or a mobile communication facility in their hand-held devices. However, in terms of tech-literacy, we lag behind to a large extent. Educational institutions will, therefore, have to organise thorough knowledge enhancement sessions for rural students and their families when they introduce any technology in the education scenario. Another aspect impeding smooth functioning of technology is poor tech connectivity or infrastructure.
But on the positive side, we are able to monitor each and every college from the university headquarters itself. We can easily figure out which college has broadband connectivity or has created classrooms that have integrated small tablets’ connectivity with the teacher’s personal computers. The teacher’s PC can have a particular model in his/her specialisation which is upgraded by downloading material that are a value addition to the classroom teaching process. Indeed, the teacher can analyse the topic and make it a more application-oriented learning process without losing the fundamentals that are the foundation of the topic.
The impact of this technology-enriched teaching and learning would, over time, be seen in the expansion of industries and businesses. This change could happen across India and go on to establish linkages with industries and businesses across the world. The 21st century belongs to the youth and they are excited about global linkages, mainly because of the socio-cultural convergence in a knowledge-linked economy.
However, India’s issues are at different levels. For one thing, the growing number of youth eager to be part of these new opportunities. This number will shoot up to 5 crore in higher education by 2025, and what is interesting is that 80 per cent of these youths would be from rural, semi-urban and mid-urban places. Their educational backgrounds are different, their language foundation is varied, and more than that, their parents’ financial base is at the lowest level. They simply are not able to think of directions and processes that would make them useful and enlightened citizens. So, their demands are pretty well defined. They want good education at the place where they’ve grown up, and they desire financial support. Once that is taken care of, they could then be in a position to enrich their families and their village’s lifestyle.
The bottomline, clearly, is that it’s time for both the states and the central government to come together on a single platform and think of launching a pradhan mantri higher education yojana. This would certainly be a fitting way to celebrate one year of completion by the NDA regime.
(The writer is a former chairman of UGC and former VC of
University of Pune)
