Nayana Karia

April 2007

India: An Overview of Technology in Education

A brief account of how technology has been introduced into the Indian education system over
the past 25 years.

Table of Contents
Introduction: India Today.....................................................................................................2
India: Land of Contrasts.......................................................................................................3
Country Facts ..................................................................................................................3
The Indian Education System: Timeline: 25 Years..............................................................4
ICT in Education: Policy and Initiatives..............................................................................5
Major Policy Statements and Initiatives..............................................................................6
2000: NCERT release of National Curriculum Framework for School Education..........6
2004: Edusat.....................................................................................................................6
2002 – 2007: The Tenth Plan...........................................................................................7
2002: Vidya Vahini ..........................................................................................................7
2006: Broadband connectivity in all secondary schools..................................................7
2007: Digital Library and Information Network.............................................................8
UNESCO: Gesci..............................................................................................................8
2002: Technology Tools for Teaching & Training in India (Project T4).........................8
2004: Bridges to the Future Initiative..............................................................................9
2005: Indo-US Collaboration...........................................................................................9
Mission 2007: Every Village a Knowledge Centre .........................................................9
Other Public-Private Partnerships for ICT in Education...............................................10
Initiatives for ICT use in Non-Formal Education..........................................................11
ICT for Special Needs....................................................................................................11
Reality Check.....................................................................................................................12
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................14

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INDIA: ICT IN EDUCATION

Source: http://harrisschool.uchicago.edu/News/press-
releases/IPP%20Economic%20Reform%20in%20India.pdf

Introduction: India Today

On May 31, 2006, the President of India addressed a standing-room only audience at the
campus of the University of California, San Diego (Ramsey, D. June 5, 2006).

Somewhat in the style described in a very old limerick:

“He departed one day the Einsteinian way and came back the previous night.”

His journey was made possible using high-definition cameras from Rashtrapati Bhavan at New
Delhi and a network of dedicated optical fiber cable stretching over 10,000 miles from New
Delhi to La Jolla, California. (Ramsey, June 5, 2006)

“Today what we are witnessing is an example of making virtual presence from India to the
University of California…We should aim at making the bandwidth available without hindrance and

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 at no cost. Making the bandwidth available is like government laying roads…" (President of India,
APJ Abdul Kalam, May 31, 2006, U.S.-India Summit on Education, Research & Technology).

India: Land of Contrasts

“India is a country of grand contradictions. While it is a global leader in the knowledge economy,
it is also home to more than half the world’s poor and illiterate people, most of whom are
women.” (Reddi & Sinha, 2004).

Country Facts

The 2001 Census of India provides the following information:

• Population - 1027 Million

• Literacy rate: 65.38%

According to the World Development Indicator 2005 Report :

• 34.7% of people are living below $1 a day

• 79.9% of the population live below $2 a day

According to The Human Development Report, 2004:

• 21% of the population suffer malnutrition

(Department for International Development Website, accessed April 2007)

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The Indian Education System: Timeline: 25 Years
“If one were to identify the single most important achievement in the field of education by the
government in the post-Independence era, it would have to be putting a school within reach of
almost every child….Of course, a school within reach is not the end - it is only the beginning…”
(InfoChange Education Website)

In 1976, education was brought under the concurrent purview of both the Central and State
governments. While the Centre provides general direction on educational policy and
curriculum, the individual state governments manage the vast network of schools. State
governments either directly run schools, or support privately-run schools through grants. There
are a small number of private schools in each state that are completely independent of
government funding (Infochange Education Website).

Education in India: A Snapshot

• 1986 -1992 : Free and Compulsory Education

Pursuant to the National Policy on Education (1986) and revised Plan of Action (1992), a
majority of States and Union Territories have introduced free education in Classes I-XII
of their schools. (Government of India, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department
of Higher Education Website (b)).

• 1979: Improving Outreach: Non-Formal Education

In 1979, the Government of India launched a program of Non-Formal Education (NFE)

for children of 6-14 years age group, who cannot join regular schools. These children
include school drop-outs, working children, and children from areas without easy
access to schools. Initially implemented in ten educationally backward states, the
scheme was extended in 1987 and is now operational in 25 states/Union Territories.
100% assistance is given to voluntary organizations for running NFE centers. (ILO
Website)

• 2001: The Mid-Day Meal Scheme: Boosting Enrolment, Attendance, and Retention

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 In a landmark decision on November 28, 2001 the Supreme Court of India made it
obligatory for the government to provide cooked meals to all children in all
government and government assisted primary schools. Though resisted vigorously by
State governments initially, the programme became almost universal by 2005, making
this the largest school feeding programme in the world, reaching 120 million primary
school children.
(Government of India, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of Higher
Education Website (b) ; Midday Meal scheme)

• 1949 onwards: Caste Based Reservation in Educational Institutions

Though caste based reservations were introduced in 1949, in 1990, a further 27% of
seats in institutions of higher education were reserved for Other Backward Classes
(OBCs), over and above the existing 22.5% reservation for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and
Scheduled Tribes (STs). (Wikipedia, Reservation in India)

ICT in Education: Policy and Initiatives

It is against this backdrop that we need to view the role of information and communication
technologies (ICT) in education in India.

For the purposes of this discussion, ICT in education can be:

• Alternative instructional delivery systems such as radio, educational TV, and audio-
visual communication
• Computers and computer-based systems for instructional delivery and management,
such as CAI (Computer Assisted Instruction), use of multi-media and Internet/web
based education (Rai & Bhattacharya)

Since the 1950s, policy has consistently favoured the use of ICT in education (Reddi & Sinha
(2004):

“From the use of radio to spearhead the green revolution, to satellite-based, one-way and
interactive television for rural development in some of the most backward districts, to today’s
thrust for the use of open and distance learning models to serve the larger populations, India has
tried it all, with varying degrees of success… Radio has a penetration of 100 per cent in the
country while satellite and terrestrial television cover nearly 80 per cent of the country”

Gyan Darshan was launched in January, 2000, with three completely digital and round-the-clock
TV channels dedicated to education. In November 2001, an FM radio channel, Gyan Vani was

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launched through different FM stations in the country. (GOI Ministry of HRD Press Release,
October 21, 2003).

Major Policy Statements and Initiatives

In the late 1990s, deregulation of the telecommunication industry began a dramatic

improvement in access to basic telephony and Internet services for the general population. Key
government initiatives are discussed below:

2000: NCERT release of National Curriculum Framework for School Education

Providing access to global information sources was made a priority goal under the National
Curriculum Framework for School Education released in 2000 by the National Council for
Educational Research and Training (NCERT). (UNESCO Website (a); NCERT Website (a))

Other stated goals included:

• the formulation of plans for the integration of computers into the curriculum,
• the creation of a framework for enhancing learning opportunities using ICTs across the
curriculum

It was also recognized that the success of the implementation of ICTs depends on the provision
of professional development opportunities for teachers.

Each state's implementation of these guiding principles differs and levels of investment,
connectivity and curriculum provisions for ICT integration vary greatly. A report of the status of
initiatives in the various states is available at the GOI, Ministry of HRD Department of Higher
Education Website (d).

Towards these stated goals, in 2006, NCERT released PDF copies of all its textbooks from class I
to class XII on its website (Sivaraman, July 13, 2006, NCERT Website (b)).

“…this may be the first time any such repository of textbooks has been available publicly on the
internet.”

2004: Edusat

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Launched in September 2004 at a cost of USD 20 million, Edusat is India’s first dedicated
education satellite.

“India will require 10,000 new schools each year and meeting the teaching needs on such a scale [by
conventional methods] will be impossible…” Madhavan Nair, chairman of ISRO, quoted in New
Scientist, (Tata, September 20, 2004)

With footprints covering the entire country, Edusat makes it possible for receive Direct to
Home quality broadcasts of educational programs using any television set and a low-cost
receiver. The result of a collaboration between the Indian Space Research Organization
(ISRO)and, the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, state departments of
education and the Indira Gandhi National Open University. This infrastructure is available to all
sectors of education, but primarily to publicly funded and implementing agencies that will be
responsible for transmission and programming for their defined audiences (Iype, July 28, 2005).

2002 – 2007: The Tenth Plan

The Tenth Plan outlined goals of improving access and reducing disparities with the Common
School System, as well as:

• renewal of curricula with emphasis on vocationalisation and employment-oriented

courses;
• expansion and diversification of the Open Learning System;
• reorganization of teacher training and greater use of ICT
(GOI, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of School Education and Literacy
Website (c))

2002: Vidya Vahini

In 2002, the Indian government launched a project called Vidya Vahini to provide for IT and IT-
enabled education in 60,000 schools in India over three years (India has about 1.1 million
schools), as part of a Rs 6,000 crore (USD 1.2 billion) project. Beginning with a pilot covering
150 schools the government proposes to equip each school with a computer lab equipped with
Internet, Intranet and television to facilitate video-conferencing, Web-broadcasting and e-
learning. (Kumar, A., October 9, 2002)

2006: Broadband connectivity in all secondary schools

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On May 20, 2006, The Government of India, Ministry of HRD, Department of Secondary and
Higher Education issued an order for the Constitution of an Integration Action Plan to
implement Broadband connectivity in all secondary schools. (Order dated May 20, 2006, GOI,
HRD, Dept. of Secondary and Higher Education Website (e))

2007: Digital Library and Information Network

Based on recommendations made by different state open universities and distance education
institutions (DEIs), the Indira Gandhi National Open University's (IGNOU) board of management
has approved the National Open and Distance Learners Library and Information Network
(NODLINET) initiative. The expert committee set up by the ministry for human resource
development (MHRD) has endorsed the initiative, which will now be implemented in a phased
manner within a period of five years. (Times News Network, April 22, 2007)

UNESCO: Gesci

At the international level, the United Nations has generated the “Global school and
Communities Initiative” (Gesci), a special campaign to promote the use of technology in
education (UNESCO Website (d)). From their Bangalore base, Gesci will work with the Indian
ministries of Information Technology and Education facilitating policy support, technical
assistance and global resources for the initiative.

2002: Technology Tools for Teaching & Training in India (Project T4)

In September 2002, the T4 project was launched in Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand,
and subsequently, in the state of Madhya Pradesh. The program offers interactive radio
instruction (IRI) and educational television for mathematics, science and English as a second
language and is designed to reach some of the hardest to reach populations. Funded by USAID,
with collaboration of state governments and local organizations, the IRI programmes in
Kannada are broadcast to nearly 165,000 schools (Project T4 Website and related articles).
Video films in the local language are telecast by the state government via EDUSAT, covering
about 885 schools. Teacher training in these schools has been undertaken with the support of
the local state governments, and the schools have been provided with Teachers’ Guides. An
evaluation of the learning gains among the students and the improvements in teaching
practices is ongoing. A copy of the Evaluation Plan is available at the project Website (e). An

Page 8 of 23
extract of field notes written by an EDC staff member after a field visit in Chhattisgarh
provides a glimpse of results.

“From the very first day of the IRI programme here in Chhattisgarh there has been a positive
response from teachers, students, audiences at large and people from the field. This response
comes not only from the pilot areas where the project was launched, but also from the areas and
schools we haven’t even targeted. One such school was randomly chosen for a visit by EDC on
October 16, 2004. As it turned out, the resource official of one of the clusters of Abhanpur block
has taken the pains to run the IRI programme in his school with his personal funds. “(EDC Staff
member Fieldnotes, July 2003)

2004: Bridges to the Future Initiative

This is a partnership between the International Literacy Institute (ILI) at the University of
Pennsylvania (USA), Byrraju Foundation, IIIT, and other agencies in the state of Andhra Pradesh.
The program aimed at providing literacy programs in the local language to out-of-school youth
and primary school students, using computer infrastructure in schools after hours. Results of a
two-year long impact study show dramatic results in putting drop-out youth back into school,
and raising learning achievement of in-school children aged 8-10 years in poor rural settings
(Wagner, Sridharan & Daswani, January 9, 2007).

2005: Indo-US Collaboration

Indo-U.S. Interuniversity Network for Higher Education and Research was launched in 2005,
a collaboration between over 20 American universities and Amrita University, The Indian Space
Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) to enhance
higher education and research in India through the Edusat e-learning network.

The Indo-US collaboration will use Edusat to deliver classes taught by US faculty to hundreds of
colleges and universities throughout India, focusing on areas such as engineering and computer
science, information and communication technologies, materials science, biotechnology and
bioinformatics, nanotechnology, medical sciences and management sciences. It also aims to
create and make available to Indian learners, a digital library of teaching materials and assets
of participating faculty and researchers.

Mission 2007: Every Village a Knowledge Centre

Mission 2007 seeks to establish 600,000 Village Resource Centres by August 15, 2007, coinciding
with India’s celebration of 60 years of independence. (Swaminathan, M.S., November 25,
2006). Establishing connectivity and covering the ‘last mile’ are imperative to this ambitious

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plan. To that end, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is planning to connect 80,000 villages
of India through wireless broadband.

“ BSNL's project will further boost the Central government's e-Governance agenda. Telemedicine,
health care, information on agriculture, distance education are some of the projects among the
priority list of the government for e-Governance. It has plans to cover 74,000 villages via WiMax.
20,000 more villages will be covered on the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL).” (Desai,
CXO, January 25, 2007)

In another venture, San Diego based QUALCOMM Incorporated has allied with the Nasscom
Foundation to provide CDMA2000-based wireless Internet connectivity solutions to 65 Village
Resource Centres under Nasscom’s Rural Knowledge Network Program. (US-India Summit Blog
June 16, 2006)

Other Public-Private Partnerships for ICT in Education

There is a plethora of Public - Private Partnerships (PPP) and Initiatives in which state
governments have partnered with large private sector organizations and multinational
corporations to help bring computer enabled education to the masses. Some of these PPP
include:

• HEADSTART in Madhya Pradesh (2003) with provider of Linux technologies, Red Hat
India. (Sharma, November 19, 2002; Government of MP Website)

• Project Shiksha (2004) with Microsoft in West Bengal, Karnataka, Andaman and Nicobar
Islands, Lakshwadeep, and Tamil Nadu. (Microsoft India Website)

• The IntelTeach Program (February 2000) to train classroom teachers in over 35 cities
nationwide to use technology to improve teaching and learning. (IntelTeach Website)

• Shiksha India (December 2001), a non-profit organization set up by the Confederation

of Indian Industry (CII), has created a teachers’ portal using open source tools and
technologies. (Shiksha India Website)

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 • Community Learning Centres (2003) were set up by the Azim Premji Foundation in rural
Karnataka. A CLC has about 6-8 computers in a Government Higher Primary School,
used by children of that school during school hours for learning curriculum through
interactive games and exercises. They are used by the community before or after
school hours and during holidays. So far, about 90 CLCs have been set up. (Jain, R.,
March 25, 2003)

Brief details of these and other initiatives are available at the UNESCO and individual project
websites, however, details of evaluations conducted and current status of these projects could
not be tracked.

Initiatives for ICT use in Non-Formal Education

Some initiatives toward the use of ICT in non-formal education include:

• Computer Based Functional Literacy Program (2004) with Tata Consultancy Services in
in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and West
Bengal (Tata Literacy Programme Website).

• Hole-In-The-Wall Training Systems (2002 – 2003) developed by NIIT, for which the
International Finance Corporation, a World Bank subsidiary invested $1.6 million for
computer kiosks in more than 60 locations to enable underprivileged children in India
to learn from a web-based curriculum (UNESCO Website (b)).

• India IT Freedom Project (2002) was launched in Andhra Pradesh in partnership with
Freedom Scientific Inc., USA. The project seeks to make ICT accessible to visually
challenged learners by the use of screen reading software. (The Hindu, August 6, 2002,
and UNESCO Website)

The UNESCO Website provides details of various other programs for ICT use in the non-formal
sector; however, current status details are not available.

ICT for Special Needs

There are some Government as well as private initiatives (Agarwal, 2003) exploring the use of
ICT for persons with disabilities (PWD), for example,

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• IIT Chennai has developed a local language editor with speech recogntion capabilities
available in 15 Indian languages along with English.
• IIIT Hyderabad recently developed a software to read web pages written in Hindi or Telugu.
• The National Association for the Blind, Delhi is developing a library of electronic
educational material for PWDs. Some 1500 titles will be stored using a format accessible
with a screen reader or for direct embossing of the text in Braille.
• In 2003, work began on Screen Access For All (SAFA), an open source initiative to develop a
screen reading software for vision impaired persons to read and write in their language of
choice. (SAFA Homepage)

Information about the current status of all these initiatives is however difficult to find.

In 2002, The Spastic Society of Karnataka undertook a study for the Azim Premji Foundation, to
assess the impact of computer aided learning on children with learning disabilities in rural
Karnataka. The study concludes that computer aided instruction offers significant
improvements in visual motor coordination, social intelligence and reading skills. (Azim
Premjee Foundation Website (d)). There is however, no information available about any
initiatives for children with disabilities launched thereafter.

Reality Check
As stated by Keniston (2002a), “You cannot believe a lot of what you are told”.

There are many initiatives and many goals. Though not lacking in ambition, to what extent they
have been implemented beyond pilot phases and sustained remains to be seen.

• There is little information available about actual implementation, evaluation, support and
maintenance of the various public – private sector partnerships. “As soon as these high-
profile projects end… the computers disappear and villagers lose the benefits.”
(McGivering, May 25, 2003)

• There is also little evidence of coordination between the different implementing agencies
or sharing of experience “about what works and what does not.”(Keniston, 2002a)

“At least fifty grassroots projects are currently using modern ICT for development in India.
Surprisingly, these projects have rarely been studied. No comparisons have been made between
them. They are seldom in touch with each other. Lessons learned in one project are not
transmitted to others. Appropriate technologies are rarely evaluated. Central questions of
financial sustainability, scalability and cost recovery are hardly ever addressed. So, opportunities

Page 12 of 23
 to learn from the diverse, creative Indian experience so far remain almost entirely wasted.
(Keniston, 2002a)”

• The country still suffers major power shortages, poor maintenance of telephone lines,
extreme poverty, and illiteracy. There is an inherent irony in all this discussion about wiring
India. The Public Report on Basic Education, the PROBE report (Evans, 1999) recorded the
lack of or dysfunctional state of basic amenities in many schools.

“As many as 52 per cent lacked playgrounds, 89 per cent did not have toilets and 59 per cent did
not have drinking water. As for teaching aids, 26 per cent did not have blackboards, 59 per cent
had no access to maps and charts, 67 per cent lacked any kind of teaching kits, and 75 per cent
had no toys for the children. In 77 per cent of the schools, there were no libraries.” (Infochange
Education Website, accessed April 29, 2007)

• Despite caste based quotas in educational institutions, in place since 1949, there is no
empirical information about the social constraints related to caste, community and gender
that continue to hinder access to technology.

Keniston (2002b) observes that there are four facets to the Digital Divide in India, that stem
from differences in wealth, as well as language (there are over 325 languages spoken in India)
and culture, national wealth and the digital elitism of IT professionals. In a similar vein, Ahuja
et.al, (2006) state that “…education is perhaps the country’s great unequalizer.“

These paragraphs from Jain’s Blog (2003) provide a glimpse of the road ahead.

“In Madhya Pradesh (MP), I also spent half a day visiting various villages around Bhopal. The
abiding memory I have is that of a classroom of 24 children (ages 8-9), half of them sitting on 3
computers in groups of four, and learning. This is part of MP’s Headstart programme, where over
2,700 schools in villages have been equipped with computers to assist in educating students…

…Seeing the kids there operating the keyboard and mouse with ease, I realised that they (and I)
could have been in a school in Mumbai or anywhere else…for them, the digital divide had been
bridged through these computers. Children everywhere have the same levels of curiosity. They
can learn at the same quick pace of their city brethren. For these children, the computer is an
ally, a friend, a window to a new world.

And then the reality sinks in. This effort is but a drop in the ocean. There are 50,000 villages just
in MP. There are over 600,000 villages in India. We are touching but a handful of people. It will
take many many years to the current pace of roll-out to reach out all the children. And by then,
India would have lost yet another generation.”

As explained by Keniston (2002a),

“Until the costs of the last mile of basic IT devices, and of local language software are brought
down, the goal of wiring India will remain unachieved. Low-cost technological solutions alone
are of course not solutions to the problems of development, but they are prerequisites for IT in
India.” (Keniston 2002a)

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• There is little discussion about the quality of the instructional material provided for mass
learning, or the pedagogies employed or local relevance. Technology alone is not enough.
Though there are several local language initiatives in implementation (such as the Tata
Literacy Project), in order to make a real dent, these need to be considerably upscaled to
reach the rural and underprivileged masses. Arora (2007) also recognizes the need to
change pedagogies and mindsets (Arora, 2007):

“To make a genuine impact on learning outcomes, strong partnerships need to be developed
between nonprofits, the private sector and the government to create meaningful and engaging
content for the children. This can be achieved by broadening the parameters of PPP to
encompass the teachers, students, and popular sociocultural bodies to help shape content. “

• Special Needs Education needs considerable attention, requiring software applications for
speech and voice recognition based on Text to Speech Synthesis and Automatic Speech
Recognition in Indian languages. Random initiatives on a small scale offer little succour to a
large percentage of people with special needs.

Conclusion
There are questions about the quality (Basu, 2006) and sustainability of random government
initiatives, implemented differently by different states and poorly aligned to the needs of
Indian industry. This has led to a “de-facto privatization” (Kapur & Mehta) of ICT education in
India with private institutions (such as Aptech and NIIT) flourishing. Today in India, ICT
education has become a lottery to success. Not every one wins the lottery though.

Word Count (not including References): 4286 words

Page 14 of 23
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