Left out of digital future

Context: Covid-19 pandemic has thrown into relief certain realities, the most basic being the divide between the digital haves and have-nots.

Recent paradigm shifts in education 

• Towards materialistic philosophy: It has been caused by four structural developments.
  • The entrepreneurship-led economic growth powered by innovation and technology.
  • Increasing knowledge intensity of production.
  • A borderless world facilitating knowledge flows.
  • Knowledge explosion, coeval with knowledge implosion.
• Changing priorities: The networked world of flexi-specialisation and changing skill matrix prioritises learning (lifelong) over study (terminal).
• Knowledge obsolescence: It involves ‘creative destruction’, not only of goods and machines, but also of ideas, knowledge, values and attitudes. 
• From resource-/labour-intensity to knowledge-intensity: Knowledge becomes a commodity, leading to commercialisation of education, predicated on creativity and innovation.
• Booming knowledge economy: Today knowledge production, collation, transaction and application are themselves independent economic activities, employing burgeoning armies of scientists, scholars, supporting personnel and using a vast array of labs, libraries and computer networks.
• Unprecedented transformations: In India, rapid increase in student enrolment and diversity; quality and relevance considerations are dominant.
  • Parents and students consider education an assured instrument of mobility.
  • Knowledge is a commodity with a thriving market.

Way Forward

• Attracting private investment: As Knowledge is a commodity with a thriving market, the commodification of it leads to commercialisation. 
• Value re-orientation and attitudinal change: Modern values — quality, competence, competitiveness, optimism, confidence, innovation — must replace older ones — discipline, obedience, hard work, respect, compliance, allegiance.
  • The importance of creative/productive work done in non-exploitative, self-actualising, self-fulfilling atmospheres must be flagged.
• Provision of universal property rights: The digital revolution will bypass the ‘capability poor’. The solution hinges on guaranteeing economic security with assured basic income through this provision.
  • Article 21A should guarantee the right to education to all sectors and levels of education.
• Including the ‘inability to pay’ pupils: Modern education is costly and the exponential growth of demand, linked to rising democratic and human rights consciousness, must be tackled by exploring the scope for financing on a larger canvas, tapping into the hitherto unexplored avenues.
  • Enhancing budget allocation: By reordering fiscal priorities, and applying methods like zero-based/ outcome budgeting etc.
  • Put education at the centre of economic/ development policy formulation.
    • Involve the corporate sector, not just through CSR, but as part of academic social responsibility.
  • Enable parents: to pay for education by ramping up their economic base through the measures mentioned above.
  • Institute endowments and enhance diaspora contributions

Conclusion: Education today is not a question of charity, but a matter of right.

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