Chandigarh: “Ye Taiban ne mhare baccho ka poori tareh nash kar diya hai. Padhai likhai to khatam ho gayee. Sara din gulliyon ke nukkad pe baith ke, ya video dekhde paven hai, ya film aur ya fir game khelte milenge. Padhai toh gayi hi, aur akhan bhi kharab kar rahe hai (These tablets have ruined our kids completely. They no longer study. They watch videos, or films, or play games sitting at street corners. Not only are their studies disrupted, tablets are also damaging their eyesight),” said Vinod Kumar, sarpanch of Dhigana village in Haryana’s Jind district.
Kumar is not the only village elder who feels that the tablets given by the Manohar Lal Khattar-led BJP government under its ‘e-Adhigam scheme’ are doing more harm than good.
In fact, on 30 July, an association of sarpanchs from the Jind block of Jind district sent a letter, signed by 66 village heads, to the additional chief secretary (school education) to take back the tablets provided to children studying in classes 10, 11 and 12 in government schools.
ThePrint has accessed similar communications made by sarpanchs of Kharak Ramji village (Jind), Alawalpur village (Palwal), Guhna village (Kaithal), Madhosinghana village (Sirsa), Agondh village (Karnal), Rohera village (Kaithal), Nagura village (Jind) .
The objective of the e-Adhigam scheme, launched by CM Khattar in May last year, is to provide online education to children belonging to poor and needy families. Under this, 2GB of free internet data is also provided.
At the time of its launch, Khattar had described it as “a first-of-its-kind scheme in the entire country”.
Subsequently, Haryana distributed nearly 5 lakh tablets, purchased at a cost of Rs 620 crore, to students of classes 10 to 12 in government schools in May and June 2022. The tablets came installed with Personalised and Adaptive Learning (PAL) software to enable learning for students.
During the Budget session in March last year, Education Minister Kanwar Pal Gujjar told the Haryana assembly that the government would provide digital material, e-books, test videos, and study material to the students availing these tablets.
He had claimed that the distribution of these tablets will fill the gap in digital learning for a majority of government school students, particularly those from economically weaker and deprived sections who are unable to afford gadgets like tablets and smartphones.
Gujjar informed the assembly that the government also approved the procurement of PAL software, costing more than Rs 5 crore for the higher classes. Around 5 lakh data SIM cards, costing Rs 47 crore, with a daily data of 2 GB were also procured for the purpose, he added.
The education minister Monday told ThePrint that some people were in the habit of criticising even the best schemes launched by the government and that it explains the opposition to the scheme.
“Haryana is the only state in India to have provided tablets to schoolchildren from economically weaker and deprived sections, so that they can get the best of education that their affluent counterparts are getting. Those from well-off families have access to smartphones, laptops, and tablets. Children can misuse the gadgets if left unattended. Their parents can keep an eye on their activities and keep advising them on how best to use these gadgets,” he told ThePrint.
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‘Complaints every day’
Talking to ThePrint Monday, Vinod Kumar, the sarpanch of Dhigana village, complained that not a day passes without worried parents approaching him with the request to get rid of the tabs given to their children.
“Parents tell me that the children are so smart that they have unlocked the features that restrict them from surfing on any other site except the one provided by the education department, or get it removed from the market. They were now using it for watching videos and films, playing games and chatting on WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook,” Kumar said.
The class 10 pass percentage of the village school was 32 per cent this time, while it was more than double the last time, he lamented. “I am not just echoing the voice of my village, or of Jind district alone, but of the parents of students studying in classes 10 and 12 of the entire state.”
In her letter to the additional principal secretary of school education department, Jind’s Nagura sarpanch Monika has written that though the purpose was to improve education, the tablets were doing exactly the opposite.
“Students download so many ‘galat cheez’ (inappropriate content) and keep watching such material throughout the day. This will have a negative impact on their future,” she wrote in Hindi, requesting the government to recall all the gadgets.
In the same vein, Naresh Kumar, vice-president of the sarpanchs association, Jind Block, asserted that most of the school children were spending the entire day looking at the tablets. It was after receiving complaints from a large number of parents, that the association of 66 villages wrote to the government, he added.
Haryana School Lecturers Association (HSLA) president Satpal Sindhu said that the association would soon meet the education minister and the additional principal secretary of the school education department to inform them about the concerns of the parents.
“When the tablets were given to students, the government installed Mobile Device Management (MDM) software to prevent unapproved software installs. However, students are smart enough to get the software removed from the market. When Class 12 pass-outs returned their devices, the MDM software on many of them had been tampered with. Parents come to the schools requesting teachers to take back the tablets because they are worried about the future of their children,” Sindhu told ThePrint.
Regarding the complaint of MDM software being bypassed, the education minister said that the government had installed software to ensure that schoolchildren are not able to make any other use of the gadgets except for the purpose given to them.
“During a recent meeting with the district education officer, I instructed them to initiate action against those who have got the software cracked, and also tell teachers to counsel students properly,” Gujjar told ThePrint.
Meanwhile, a school lecturer told The Print that even the learning material to be accessed through these gadgets are not up to the mark.
“Most of the contents are just PDFs from the NCERT. No videos are being provided to schoolchildren for learning. For class 10, the material is for English, Hindi and social studies subjects, while for Class 12, it’s only for English and Hindi. No material at all is being supplied for science or commerce. If we look at the total learning material provided to students, it’s not even 25 per cent of their syllabus,” the school lecturer, also a post-graduate teacher who teaches classes 11 and 12, said.
To this claim, the Haryana education minister said that the government has now provided all the material needed by students.
(Edited by Tony Rai)