In another, ‘expected’ decision, the government plans to replace all traditional boards with digital boards. They plan to replace seven lakh boards within three years. A noble cause but forgot to allocate any funds.
HRD minister Prakash Javadekar rolled out the scheme to equip five lakh classrooms of the higher secondary and senior secondary schools (classes IX to XII) of the government schools as well as two lakh classrooms of the public-funded higher education institutes.
While the ministry aims to cover nearly 1.5 lakh secondary and senior secondary schools under the scheme by 2022, the university grants commission (UGC) has proposed to cover 300 universities and 10,000 colleges under the scheme in three years, starting from 2019.
India has nearly 15 lakh schools across the country and close to 50,000 higher education institutions. About 10% of the schools and higher education institutions are already equipped with digital boards.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley rolled the scheme in the last budget under ‘Operation Digital Board’ scheme. This scheme requires fund of 7000-10000 crores. The Finance Minister didn’t allocate or planned any funds.
When asked about the funds, Javadekar said not to worry and would soon plan the scheme properly. It is assumed that the funds could be made available for implementation of the ‘operation digital board’ in schools from Rs 36472.40 crore allocated to the school education department on the head of Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA).
The pedagogical improvement is the need of the hour. The problem is that the government again haphazardly revealed the scheme without planning from where these funds will come. This makes the scheme just an inflated bloat of election goodies.
