Chapter 14: Using Technology To Meet The Educational Aspirations of A Nation: Macro-Level Plans and Micro-Level Needs

In developing countries, policy makers, while allocating their meager resources, have to strike a delicate and appropriate balance between various priorities. Consequently, despite the increasing awareness about the need to invest in the education sector and the pressure from all sections of the public to do so, allocation for education continues to be inadequate as resources are limited. Few developing countries have been able to reach the 6% of Gross National Product (GNP) mark that has been widely accepted to be the minimum requirement.

At the dawn of the 21st century, Indian policy makers decided to examine innovative ways of reaching the unreached as fifty years of concerted attempts to extend education to all had not yielded the expected results.¹ The Census of India (2001) showed that rural India continued to lag behind in terms of literacy (59% as against urban India’s 80%). Besides, with the millennium development goal of universal primary education yet an unattained goal, primary, rather than higher, education was a priority area for investment of public resources. Higher education, consequently, was likely to suffer, to the detriment of the students, as expert teachers were in short supply.