Due to the vastness of population, land and diversity in cultures as well as terrains, India has always faced the issue of having two opposite poles in its society. Right from lifestyle to languages, there has been great difference between various parts of the society. Same is the case of educational resources in India. A vast difference can be seen on the educational infrastructure in the urban and rural areas. The schools in rural areas face a huge lack of trained teachers and basic infrastructural resources like proper classrooms, electricity, etc which results into a very poor quality of education being imparted. It does not fulfil the need and importance of education. Even though recently the government has started working towards it, there are no actual grass root level changes being seen.
According to the data by District Information System for Education (DISE), out of all the government schools, only 53% of them have electricity. The rest are majorly located in the rural areas; hence, they have to face the problem. With the recent advent of the digital infrastructure in urban schools, India has been aiming towards a Digital India. But majority of the rural schools do not have a proper electric connection, let alone, computers and an internet connection. Even if there are computers, the untimely electricity makes it difficult for them to function. There are no proper sanitation and health facilities provided which has resulted into increase of dropouts in rural schools, especially girl dropouts. Despite the attempts to create proper toilets are being carried out, how many of them are usable is still a question. It is a well-known fact that there are many villages where schools ae not even built; the interested students have to travel to another villages or to the school which is closer to them. But main problem is not the distance but unavailability of proper transportation which has physical effects on the students.
Another important problem faced by the rural schools is unavailability of properly trained and qualified teachers. Even when teachers are assigned, a high rate of absenteeism can be seen among them. The teachers who are appointed have to often take on various tasks like maintaining the infrastructure of schools, creating awareness regarding the importance of education among the rural residents and encourage their children to attend schools, implementing social schemes through school medium and all this leads to a very less time spent actually teaching the students.
In this pandemic of Covid-19, we have all seen how the schools in urban and metropolitan cities sprung into action immediately in the lockdown and began teaching through digital and online means. But what about the rural schools and students, who don’t have basic electricity and required equipment to learn digitally? And even if they have the equipment, it seen they are not taught the proper use of it.
These are all the very big differences in the schooling of rural and urban areas. If don’t give an infrastructural boost to the rural schools, this gap is going to keep increasing to the point of no return where half of India will consist of highly educated people where as the other half will be the result of a poor education system.
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