Crowding sourcing: Will it help to needy/underprivileged learners

"We make a living by what we get, But we make a life by what we give" -Winston Churchill

0

India, as a developing country needs to pace fast with time to be at par with other countries worldwide and so is the need to grow individuals who have the knowledge to question the undesirable and ideas to stand for a change. Thus imparting education and making it reach more people is the need of the hour.

But a major hindrance to education is poverty that has trapped nearly 38% of Indians in its clutches. While an income less than ₹135 per day stands under the BPL category internationally, the cost of providing 13 years of education to a child in a developing country is around ₹83.78 per day as per research made by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO). Learning stands as an epitome of success, but quality education in this competitive world has become highly expensive. While education has become one of the greatest needs of this changing era, it has become equally difficult to attain it. Many students manage to get into schools and colleges but further, scraping together money to afford the sky-high expenses of the books and study materials becomes a difficulty. As a result of this, many people often tend to drop out of school or colleges and discontinue from any further education.

There are still people whose lives are hard-pressed because of poverty. There are colleges that constantly tell low-income students that they do not belong. According to an article by Molly Redden in “The Chronicle of higher education”, 7 of 10 students skip buying a textbook because of its cost and ultimately many parents back off from sending their child to schools or colleges keeping in mind the embarrassment that their kids would have to face for not being able to afford books and also the future expenses that line up.

Going by statistical data and sources, despite growth in online market purchases and availability of discounted books, the average cost of college textbooks has increased four times faster than the rate of inflation over the past ten years. The foreign College Board reports that students needed to spend about $ 1200- $ 1440 for books and materials in the year 2018 – 2019 which amounts to more than 1 lakh per year in terms of Indian currency. This has caused about 68% of students to skip buying textbooks at some point in their college careers.

To bring about a change, motivate people and end these prejudices, it is need of an hour to develop a mechanism – a website, to collect books and other reading materials through the concept of crowdsourcing and then distribute them to the needy. This process would increase the reach of umpteen varieties of books to a larger population. This portal would aim to get knowledge and learning to the underprivileged learners of society and to encourage parents to consider education as a necessity in this growing world. The objective behind this would be to make every learner stand competent to others in the world by being able to build opinions and have viewpoints on things in life. Making books/reading materials accessible for those who can’t afford would build a mass of dexterous youth for the future. On the other hand, those who have already read their books and want to discard the old books because of the scarcity of space and difficult to keep with them. The indiscriminate printing of books is also not good for our environment.

The biggest advantage of the donner will not only for simply charity but it’s an opportunity to share and spread their knowledge out in the world. Since they have already purchased the books, the gift won’t cost anything to them. In fact, the donation of educational materials takes away the galore of good wishes and happiness back with them.

The government should think-on and take initiative to develop such a mechanism by developing a portal (with a searchable catalogue) and connect to both donner and needy learners. This may be named as “NATIONAL OPEN BOOK BANK”. This will be a small step to send love and warmth in the form of educational materials to the underprivileged students. It will also add the strength of knowledge to their bleak world and flowers of wisdom and freedom bloom fresh and hope India would then turn to become a country full of intellectuals.

Dr. Nihar Patra
About the authors

The article has been authored by Dr. Nihar K. Patra, University Librarian at Nalanda University, Rajgir and Ms. Akanksha Patro, Bsc Maths (Hons), Student at Gargi College, University of Delhi, New Delhi

Leave A Reply

Your email address will not be published.