E-Learning: A Tool for Education in Rural India

Abstract

The population of India counts to 1.0270 billion according to the 2001 census. 70% of this population is habited in villages or rural areas. Rural Indian population is not as fortune as the urban population in terms of access to quality education system (technical education) and information & communication technology infrastructure of cities. The Information Technology (IT) Giant India needs to take its development programs of education, health, technology, agriculture to the masses to eliminate disparities, specifically the digital divide. India has an excellent education system of more than 380 universities and 1265 engineering colleges [4] providing IT education in the country. Despite this the availability of trained manpower is in short supply as far as IT manpower is concerned. As projected in many reports India could face a shortage of 0.5 million skilled IT manpower by 2009. These statistics are indicative of the fact that there is a need of other alternatives to reduce the digital divide (Rural V/s Urban) in the country and also to fill the gap of shortage of IT trained manpower. In such a scenario e-Learning could play a vital role since its enabler, IT infrastructure is developing in India at a very fast pace as it is evident with the development of Business Process Outsourcing industry and number of telephone users in the country. The President of India in his address (4^th August, 2004) to the children of the nation said “education is the catalyst of change” and ‘Information Technology is the major driving force and change agent”. To achieve the objective of providing education to all children, he announced the project “EDUSAT”, which would install 150,000 ground terminals in the country. In addition new initiative of e-Government policies of the government are encouraging the usage of information technology in all sectors of the economy including education. In the nutshell, India has a conducive environment where e-Learning could develop in future to solve many problems of education especially in rural India. Keeping this in background, author presented in this paper, various facets of e-Learning in India, present status of e-Learning activities, major organizations & their technologies for creating e-Learning information systems, regulatory framework, government initiations, impact of e-Learning technologies on the education system. In addition the paper includes a framework of e-Learning for rural India and a business case of implementation of e-learning “knowledge hubs” in Aligarh district of Uttar Pradesh.