A survey named called the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), shows that even though the number of rural students attending schools is rising, but more than half of the students in fifth grade are unable to read a second grade text book and are not able to solve simple mathematical problems. Not only this, the level of maths and reading is further declining. Though efforts are being made, they are not in the right direction. The reason cited for this problem in surveys is the increasing number of single classroom to educate students from more than one grade. In some states attendance of teachers and students is also declining. These are a few reasons why schools have failed to educate rural India.
Most textbooks are in English and since people in rural areas either speak their native language or Hindi, but not English that defeats the purpose. This results in lack of their interest in studies. Though some of the students from villages are really brilliant, as they have a wealth of practical knowledge and know how to survive even in very harsh conditions of life, difficultly in understanding their textbooks, lack of facilities and their poverty are a hurdle in their education.
There is a difference between city and village student not in terms of brain or development but their initial environment, skills, learning ability, availability of infrastructure, and access to different facilities. All of these must be considered while making the curricula which should not be different but how it is going to be taught would make the difference. Encourage the genuine rural students who are interested in education and make them competent. There are many examples of success in rural education in India like the Barefoot college, 8 Day Academy and Gurukul School in Bihar. These are innovative and successful examples of schools running in rural India. It is the time to replicate such efforts as our country and its rural population is very vast which means one of two stories of these kinds won’t make any difference. Instead of this large number of such schools are required in rural India. It is also absolutely mandatory to evaluate the success of the schools and students at each and every level. Timely assessment will throw light on present problems and achievements. Let us try to build a solution around these problems which will resolve the overall issues of rural education in India.
Mobile phones, internet, tablets, iPads, their applications, social media even traveling, cooking, communication etc are part of our lives from the start till the end of the day. Technology is touching every aspect of society and changing it dramatically. But there is one very important and indispensable part of the society that has also been tapped by new innovations and discoveries and that is education. Like all other areas, in this case also urban areas are influenced to a greater extent than rural one. So much more could have been done to bring the revolution in learning process in rural areas of India.
In India illiteracy is one of the biggest problems. Lack of easy access, lack of teachers, lack of interest, poverty, gender differentiation, lack of infrastructure, common curricula are few of the reasons which are holding back the progress in rural education. But with the use of technology mass education can be given and situation can be changed. To reach rural areas, first of all study material can be distributed to the students then online interaction and online videos can be made with teachers. Online teaching creates extended classroom communities for discussions, virtual classrooms and for interaction. There is another option in which classroom courses can be recorded in a real time and used for teaching the students who cannot attend these classes. This creates an expanded access to education. Rural education needs e-learning technologies. Apart from this audio conferencing and video conferencing should be made part of the education system in rural India. Teachers at the schools are not well equipped with the gadgets. So teachers should be given printers, laptops, for giving notes and notices to the students. By using technology the problem of unqualified teachers can also be solved.
In 1998, the NDA government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee launched a massive National Highways Development Project for building a four/six-lane expressway network connecting the four metros (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata) along with four corners of the country (Srinagar, Porbandar, Kanyakumari and Silchar). The impact of it is well-documented. Not as known and celebrated, however, is a parallel programme that his government initiated on December 25, 2000 — the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) for providing all weather road connectivity to every rural habitation with a minimum population of 500 in the plains and 250-plus in hill states, tribal districts and desert areas. The fully centrally-sponsored scheme covered a total of 1,78,184 habitations as per the criteria laid down. The fact that 1,14,540 or 64 per cent of these eligible habitations actually have roads today — with projects being cleared for another 30,501 — can be considered a reasonable achievement. Since its inception, PMGSY has provided connectivity of over 4,66,044 km — including upgradation of 1,67,977 km of existing roads — at an aggregate cost of Rs 1,41,822 crore as on January 2016. But the real story is not how much, but where these roads have got built.
National Rural Road Development Agency (NRRDA) has prepared a manual “Managing Maintenance of Rural Roads in India”. This initiated the execution of maintenance works and the development of these training modules for engineers and contractors associated with rural road maintenance works. To strengthen such activities in the participating states, a series of training of trainers workshops were arranged at national and state level based on the course material developed. The training modules broadly cover the principles for maintenance management of rural roads, planning and execution of common maintenance interventions to ensure reliable transport services and safety to users and the local communities served by the rural roads, and arrangements for monitoring the performance of contractors engaged for the task. Digital India & Skill India play a key role in driving economic growth by creating new income-generating opportunities, making the delivery of public services more effective, transparent and efficient, connecting them to the world economy and overall contributing to the social and economic transformation of entire region. This kind of transformation is even more necessary for rural and isolated areas, where widespread access to ICTs and effective use of these technologies for productive purposes, can make a tremendous difference in development outcomes. The development and application of e-governance, e-agriculture, e-health centres will be more popular and attractive in rural areas.
Lack of adequate sanitation is a pressing challenge in rural India. Every day, an estimated 1,000 children under five die in the country because of diarrhoea alone. Prevalence of child under-nutrition in India (47 per cent according to National Family Health Survey (NFHS) III, 2005-06) is among the highest in the world. Child under-nutrition is aggravated by the prevalence of diarrhoeal disease, and is responsible for 22 per cent of the country’s burden of disease (World Bank 2005). Sanitation-related diseases take a heavy toll of lives, especially children’s lives, and are a drain on productivity and incomes. Lack of adequate sanitation also forces households into the continued indignity of open defecation, which is an acute problem especially for women and young girls. Improving access to sanitation is therefore appropriately included in the Millennium Development Goals. Another major problem that the country faces today is the practise of scavenging, which mostly engages women. There are 7,70,338 human scavengers and their dependents in India. The first national program to increase access to rural sanitation on a large scale, the Central Rural Sanitation Program, was launched in 1986. Despite considerable investment, this approach failed to motivate and sustain high levels of sanitation coverage as it was based on the erroneous assumption that provision of sanitary facilities would lead to increased coverage and usage. Recognizing the limitations of this approach, the Total Sanitation Campaign was launched in 1999. The TSC moves away from the infrastructure focussed approach of earlier programs and concentrates on promoting behaviour change. People do not attribute lack of sanitation to be the primary cause for major illness but think that it is due to a lack of proper nutrition, hard physical labour or general weakness of the human system over the years from early marriage, child birth, weakness from repeated attacks of malaria and viral fevers, etc. Subsistence livelihoods and living conditions, generate a lower hope for improvement.
However, where open spaces are plenty, there is often less pressure to build toilets. o sanitation uptakes are not as simple as they appear. “Many women, girls and elderly do feel a desperate need for toilet, but they think that it is unreasonable to make the demand considering the financial crisis of the family and the struggle of their parents or head of the family,” India faces the challenge of having the most number of people in the world defecating in the open and also has a burgeoning crisis of untreated faecal waste that is contaminating surfaces and ground water creating an imminent health crisis. Both motivating people to build and to use toilets is emerging as a major national priority as outlined in the Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Mission) initiated in October 2014 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for achieving open defecation free India by 2nd October 2019.
Health, defined as the state of complete physical, mental, social and spiritual well-being and not merely absence of disease and infirmity, proves to be a major contributor to the level of quality of life. Healthy population plays a key role in achieving the developmental activities as health helps to improve the productivity of mankind both directly and indirectly. The health picture of our country is far from satisfactory. The vision of “Health for all by 2000” has not materialized. The situation in rural areas of India, where over two-thirds of our population lives is worse with only rudimentary health care services being available to the masses. All the recent advances in medical science and technology have not reached the majority of the disadvantaged people living in rural India. Poor socio-economic status and poor health status together make a vicious cycle wherein poverty brings inadequate nutrition, unhealthy environment, sickness causing low productivity and hence poverty Several organizations are working alongside the government and NGOs to help relieve the burden on the public health system using mobile technology. India has over 900 million mobile phone users and this fact can be leveraged to employ better practices in even the remote areas. Leading global organizations of healthcare industry are using our mobile technology to enhance the quality of care and bridge the gaps in healthcare services.
