Introducing computers in Indian schools: institutional resistances and the making of a digital divide

ABSTRACT

The introduction of computers in Indian schools runs parallel with the development of a digital divide in the country. In addition to the formal ways in which government policies shape access to computers in schools, deeper informal cultures of the state and schools shape opinion about these technologies. In this paper, we examine three levels of these informal cultures: political cultures and their perceptions of technology; bureaucratic cultures, which are distanced from schooling realities; and classroom teaching-learning practices, where digital inequalities add to pre-existing educational inequalities. For examining the interplay of the informal cultures, we scale down from the national level to examine the case of West Bengal, a state in eastern India. The state has been one of the strongholds of Left politics in India. Drawing upon its experiences, we explore the linkage between political ideology and the social embedding of resistance to computers.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital divide
• path dependence
• computers
• schools
• India

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the officials from the Government of India, NCERT, WEBEL and West Bengal state government who were generous with their insights and support in the making of this paper. We also thank the anonymous referee and editors of this special issue for their incisive comments on previous drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 India, Supreme Court of India, 8 October 2021, SLP(C) No. 4351/2021; Action Committee Unaided Recognized Private Schools vs. Justice for All & Others.

2 Interview with Prof. A. K. Jalaluddin, formerly Joint Director at NCERT, who was involved in the implementation of CLASS (September 2019); the British connection with the Indian computer literacy program in schools was corroborated in an interview with a senior official of the Government of India who was part of CLASS (December 2019).

3 Interview with Prof. A. K. Jalaluddin.

4 The figures are sourced from a document titled ‘Progress of Computer Education in Schools in West Bengal’, undated. The document was accessed from the archives of Department of Education, Bikash Bhavan, Kolkata, West Bengal.