E-Learning in India

Abstract

Education is an essential tool for the economical and social development of a nation. Proper development of human resources is crucial to that. To make everyone able to receive education, there are different forms of educational programmes and provisions. In India, adult education, open and distance education, Operation Blackboard, sarva siksha abhiyan, and so forth have been put in place to achieve universalisation of education. The literacy rate has shown an increase from 36.17% in the 1970s, 52.19% in 1991, to 65.38% in 2001. An increase in the strength of educational institutions is also evident from the fact that while there were over 20 universities and 500 colleges in 1947, now India has 311 universities (including 19 central universities, 206 state universities, 86 deemed-to-be universities, 13 institutes of national significance, and five institutions established through the State Legislature Act; Dhir, 2004). The Indian higher education system is said to be the second largest after U.S. in the world, based on the expansion of institutions, student enrollment, and faculty. But to this rosy picture, the other dark side of the coin is that in spite of having this large educational infrastructure, higher education is accessible only to 6% to 7% of 18- to 23-year-olds, as found out by a World Bank report (2001) and Kumar (2004). Dongaonkar (2004) reported that there are other developing countries that have a higher percentage of educational coverage, for example, Indonesia (11%), Brazil (12%), Mexico (14%), and Thailand (19%). The government of India (2002) has laid the emergent need of providing educational opportunities, for more than 3.2 million children (six to 14 years) and 100 million adults (13 to 35 years) need school education.