It has been reported that over 2.96 crore school students are lacking digital devices. Among all the states, Bihar tops this list and has the fewest number of children that have access to digital services.
The aggregate of 2.96 crore does not comprise students from Delhi (4 percent) Jammu and Kashmir (70 percent), Madhya Pradesh (70 percent), Punjab (42 percent), and Chhattisgarh (28.27 percent) as their complete digits were not disseminated.
Also, according to the sources, the data for states encompassing Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Maharashtra, Manipur, and Uttar Pradesh is still not accessible and the poll for West Bengal is in progress.
What is the credibility of this data presented?
In accordance with the government data submitted this Monday in the Lok Sabha describes that over 2.96 crore school students across 24 states do not have any means to access digital devices. Bihar documenting the elevated numbers among all.
The facts or data were introduced by the Union Education Minister Mr. Dharmendra Pradhan through his written acknowledgment in the Lower House answering a particular question.
Therefore, if checked in terms of approximate digits, Bihar has the greatest number of students who do not have access to any form of digital services, which is at 1.43 crore. The next state to follow Bihar in this matter is Jharkhand where around 35.52 lakh students can not afford to utilize digital services, followed by Karnataka where the number decreases slightly, around 31.31 lakh and then, Assam with 31.06 lakh. Over 21 lakh such children in Uttarakhand lack digital services for academic purposes.
What about the other states?
It is estimated that the rest of the states with over 10 lakh children who are still waiting to acquaint themselves with digital devices are present in Haryana, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu. Along the other side, Kerala has 9.5 lakh children in this classification, the Union Education Minister added.
As the COVID-19 outbreak was sudden and unexpected, the education sector is trying to return on track through digitalization and has switched the learning process to online mode. Both the educators and students are coping with the situation where classroom learning like earlier is not possible.
The government fact-check, Press Information Bureau (PIB) fact-checker, denied a false statement on August 3, associated with delivering free laptops to learners to assist the virtual learning process
Amidst the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of educational institutions have adopted online or virtual learning procedures. Amongst these, there are several claims of fake news covering social media platforms asserting that the government will deliver free laptops to reduce the barrier between the learning process. According to the government fact-check, Press Information Bureau (PIB) fact-checker, they officially denied this assertion today pertained to furnishing free laptops to learners to aid online learning.
The claim cited, the Ministry of Education has a distribution program for delivering free laptops to the students for carrying out their virtual, online learning process. The PIB fact-checker has discredited this statement and elucidated that no such declaration has been compelled yet.
“A message along with a link is claiming that Education Ministry Of India will provide free laptops to all people to support virtual learning amid the COVID-19 outbreak,” by PIB, a tweet from their official Twitter handle.
