Pune: It's more than 100 days, the coronavirus cases are rising. The government released the guidelines for Unlock 2.0 where school, colleges and other academic institutes as well as coaching centres to remain close till July 31.
Various schools and colleges are now adopting online teaching skills as well as the state government has decided to provide online education to school children. In this situation, sophisticated tools like Android-based phones, tabs, internet and more are required for online education but these tools are not available to the needy and underprivileged students in rural and urban areas. Therefore, Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) Laxman Jagtap has appealed and demanded that the Maharashtra state government should resume Balchitravani, films for teaching.
The MLA Jagtap has sent an e-mail to the Maharashtra state Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and the School Education Minister Varsha Gaikwad stating that the state government had set up a state-run Institute of Educational Technology in Pune in 1984 with the help of the central government to provide satellite and broadcast such education.
Speaking to Sakal Times MLA Jagtap said, “Since 1984 till 1992, the institute was affiliated to the Maharashtra State Council for Educational Research and Training, Pune. This institution was under the complete administrative control of the State Government. Later, in 1992, the government registered Balchitravani as an autonomous body under the Public Trusts Act. The Board of Governors of Balchitravani closed down the organization on April 3 2017. The government has allotted five acres of land at Deccan Gymkhana in Pune to Balchitravani.
He went on, “At present, Balbharati is in control of this children's film. Educational programs produced by Balchitravani were being broadcast on television for over more than three decades. Therefore, students were able to get quality education by sitting at home through television as well as the parents at present are undergoing huge financial crises they cannot afford additional expenditure to occur. The teaching online for an hour and two is difficult for the children to sit before screen and study. I doubt if they are able to pay attention and grab what they have been taught.”
He added, “However, not all students can take online education. Online education is not affordable, especially for students in rural and urban areas. Because online education requires mobile or tab as well as the internet. These tools are not available to poor students. In such a scenario, students in the state need to think about how online education will be easily available at a very low cost.”
“For this, Balchitravani can be a useful mood of parting education to them. It will be convenient and beneficial for all the students to prepare educational programs of all classes through this institute and broadcast them on radio and television through satellite. The state government should seriously consider this issue and re-launch Balchitravani to educate the poor students in the state as well this will also lead to employment in this sector too,” he concluded.
