As discussed in the chapters 1 and 3, the Rajasthan Education Initiative was started in 2005 at the behest of IT companies led by WEF and GeSCI (formalised through a UN- ICT task force group). The 2007 IT & Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) policy which had the aim to build a talent pool for IT industry, had a self congratulatory tone regarding REI and a promise to enhance employability of young people in the Global economy (See Box 6.1).
In fact, the government did intend to bring the entire education life cycle under the purview of the ICT intervention in REI. However, the extent and nature of the digital divide are not discussed either in the REI vision document (GoR, n.d.a, p.1) or the IT policy document of 2007 (GoR, 2007b). Furthermore, the REI-PMU did not have the remit or the resources to realise the REI vision.
This chapter through an analysis of three cases representing attempts of IT sector partnerships and the REI as such to bring in change through IT sector and industry
41
According to the programme evaluation report on SSA, only 5% schools of the three sample districts in Rajasthan had electricity (GoI, 2010).
Box. 6.1 Excerpt from IT & ITES Policy (2007)
“Government of Rajasthan has undertaken a successful endeavour in the form of ‘Rajasthan Education Initiative (REI)’ that is aimed at comprehensively improving the delivery of educational services at school level through a set of innovative interventions. This program extensively uses Public Private Partnership (PPP) models for promoting use of ICT in education for mitigating digital divide. State Government would take appropriate steps to extend the REI to cover the entire education life cycle starting from primary school to secondary school to senior secondary and further on to college / vocational / higher education / university level. This way, REI would be positioned as a long term program aimed at enhancing the employability of youth in the Global economy. Secondary Schools shall be funded to have internet connections to enable students to connect to the rest of the world.” (GoR, 2007b)
involvement argues that the scale of REI and the ICT partnerships was not sufficient to achieve REI goals.
Again, there was an inherent contradiction within the government which was aiming at enhancing employability of youth through PPPs in REI (Box 6.1) whilst the REI vision document under a specific heading titled ‘Employment Aspect’, clarifies:
It will not be out of place to mention here that with the kind of strategy REI will have at the primary, upper primary and secondary school level, employment should not be mistaken as the goal of education. It is too early to place employment as the goal of education at this early stage. It is, however, true that eventually the ability to meet competitiveness will automatically develop as is true of every society. (GoR, n.d.a, p. 21)
What would employability mean without employment opportunities?42 Even with the involvement of international core partners in the planning of REI, this MSP model had no planned employment generation aspects, only education inputs. Rather the team had altogether absolved itself of answerability to any demand for employment opportunities which this programme could possibly generate (ibid.). This is notwithstanding the fact that GEI documents promote partnerships in education with a promise for economic growth and employment.
The ambition to tread on the path of IT driven progress and becoming a knowledge economy is not something which Rajasthan developed during or because of the launch of the REI in 2005. However what is interesting to note here is that though the idea of competitiveness has been brought into the public education system, the government also believed that this will evolve in an organic manner. Rajasthan had launched its first IT
42
The Rajasthan Industrial and Investment Promotion Policy – 2010 estimates that by 2015 Rajasthan will need human resource of 5-5.2 million persons till 2015 in various industries with construction industry followed by textiles, healthcare, tourism and hospitality. In this estimate of incremental demand the IT and ITes industry requirement is expected to grow from 6000 (in 2006-2007) to 48000 in 2015. If we compare it with the requirement estimated in construction where it will increase from 500,000 to 3188,000, we can see
policy in 2000 during the Congress party regime which was revised in year 2007 (GoR, 2007b) during the Bharatiya Janata Party regime.
The IT policy of 2000 document dates the first phase of computerisation in Rajasthan way back in 1985 – 86 which was limited to automating clerical operations (GoR, 2000, p.19). Rajasthan wanted to build upon this success and to make it available to most of its population. The policy envisaged this through integrating IT supported education in higher secondary schools and colleges. An IT course module was made compulsory component of all degree courses from the session starting April 2003.
“The State Government is quite aware that the goal of creating an IT driven and knowledge-based society in the State cannot be achieved without building core competencies in human resource development with substantial inputs of information technology knowledge.” (ibid., p.15)
At the time of launch of the policy in 2000 a GoI funded scheme “Computer Literacy & Studies in School” (CLASS) was in operation in 135 Government Senior Secondary Schools in Rajasthan (p.16).43
There are 9801 secondary and senior secondary schools in Rajasthan (GoR, 2010). The teachers who were initially trained for handling computers had been transferred to some other school while others had forgotten how to work with computers since they never used computers for either personal or professional purposes. This was the situation in 2009, in most of the schools which were given computers around eight-nine years ago. The computers had been simply sitting in schools as exhibits of a previous scheme and were not usable because of outdated operating system and slow speed. The teachers also said that it is very inconvenient to work with computers when the electricity supply keeps on
43
In 2009, I was in Udaipur city to study several REI partnerships, one of them being Naandi Foundations partnership focussing on comprehensive health care to school students in Udaipur city. During my visit to schools to speak with children and teachers about the health care services provided by the foundation, I came across two government secondary schools in Udaipur City which had computers. In one school the computers were in the school principal’s room and in another school in the staff room safely placed on desks collecting dust and covered. In both the cases the computers had not been in use since a long time. These computers were given to the schools in year 1999-2000 (Interviews, government teachers, 2009).
fluctuating and is inconsistent. So despite the policy formulation for IT supported education envisaged at secondary level and degree level courses the programme the attempts for computer literacy were not successful due to implementation bottlenecks and lack of curricular integration.
The IT policy (2000) had set the mandate for the state to develop standardised computer syllabi besides taking necessary steps to enrich the existing curriculum in Senior Secondary level schools through use of computers and multimedia technology (p.16). However any strategy for integration was never developed (Interview, SSA official, 2009). Provision for free floor space to private providers for setting up internet café and IT training centres was made through the IT policy 2000 (p.18). Thirty two district level IT training centres were proposed to be set up and outsourced to private companies so that the government employees including the teachers in secondary schools could be trained. The IT companies were given special exemptions,
“IT Software and IT Services companies, being the constituents of the knowledge industry, shall be exempted from routine inspection by inspectors such as those for Factory, Boiler, Excise, Labor, Pollution, Environment, Industry, RSEB etc. in line with the approved policy of GoI. Notification No.F.( ) IIB/IT/Ind/2K” (ibid., p.9)
Thus the digital provision in the state was state-led providing business opportunities to the market through not only creating scope for business but also giving subsidies and exemptions and started as early as in the year 2000. The newness in the REI story is that REI itself was launched at the behest of IT companies and when a different political party was at the helm in Rajasthan. There was no attempt to evaluate the previous initiatives of the government or build on these while designing REI.
The GoR revised its IT policy in 2007 after the launch of REI. This was also the period when another government programme – India’s Computer Aided Learning Programme (CALP or simply CAL) – was in operation. The demands created by another state-led programme also created opportunities for IT businesses to serve as providers for IT infrastructure. Thus NIIT, one of the REI partners of the HiWel project, won the tender
The training of teachers in ICTs conducted by the Microsoft IT Academy and Intel partnerships of REI were in operation in the same time period when the expansion plans of computer aided learning (CAL) of the GoR were being implemented (Field notes, 2009).
These training programmes were merely the first step towards computer literacy and their pedagogic utility and impact cannot be ascertained. This is because of the lack of a comprehensive curricular plan in the state for deploying ICTs as a pedagogic tool besides infrastructural issues such as unpredictable electricity supply and security constraints (Interviews with SSA officials, government school teachers and HMs in Ajmer, Udaipur and Jaipur, 2009, 2010).
But what did this mean for the education life cycle from Primary to secondary school and the employability of young people which the IT policy and REI claimed to deliver? Was the scale of the projects and programmes sufficient to achieve the REI aims or the aims of the IT & ITES policy? Are the attempts made through IT based initiatives under REI enough to bridge the digital divide and are they sustainable? These are the questions I will attempt to answer in this chapter in my pursuit to understand REI as an innovative PPP and MSP model.
The chapter addresses research questions 2, 3, 4 and 5 focussing on the content of the partnerships, their governance, development and impact, and finally an assessment whether these partnerships are sustainable and scalable. As in the previous chapter, I have organised each case study using the DSG framework which I developed in Chapter 3.
In this section I discussed the Rajasthan’s IT policies launched in 2000 and 2007 with reference to the government’s vision of growth and employability. In the next section I will present three case studies of ICT based interventions in REI.