Analysis of digital divide pertaining to changing environment across educational sector with the emergence of COVID 19

 • It has been few years since India had first launched digital India campaign, which was cater to enhance digital literacy of the people. Policy measures and initiatives were taken at educational institutes to encourage digital literacy among children of all age-group. Gadgets were provided at the elementary school in many rural areas to encourage school administration for encouraging children towards digital literacy.

 • With the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic, the country went into a lock-down period and hence all the educational institutes were shutdown, resulting in halting of school/ college-based education and new initiatives were started such as home-based online education and education programme on television and radio. These, new normal situation scenario has again highlighted the contrast between vast digital divide that exist across the nation. The ramifications of COVID 19 on the work environment around all the industries has been in observation, which clearly indicates the importance of digital literacy in the years to come.

 • The challenges in bridging up digital divide are access, availability of digital devices, training of teachers, parental guidance. Children of different age-group have different educational needs. Policy measures related to e-learning should be in accordance with that. Indian Government need to facilitate e-learning to children belonging to marginalized communities across India

 • It has been 11 years since right to education became an act. We also need to pay attention to stress, anxiety and e-fatigue that digital medium creates in the livelihoods of children. It is very crucial that children do not get overburdened by e-fatigue.

 • There was one experiment conducted by a researcher where he kept a computer machine in a locality where number of poor children were residing. After sometime when the researcher came back to the place, he observed that children had learnt to assemble and use the computer device by themselves, teaching us that children learn and adapt very quickly as compared to adults.

 • The government’s role is very important in creating an environment where access to equity, access to quality education is available to all sections of society. Irrespective of economic strata. Thus, the government need to take policy measures to ensure the bridge between digital divide present at the moment. For this several initiative need to be taken up. There are many applications such as MathIQ and BYJU which have catered to the need of online education.