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Poor monitoring hampers Haryana EDUSAT plan
Geetanjali Gayatri
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 25
Already worth Rs 112 crores, the EDUSAT programme in Haryana schools is ailing, suffering from a lack of ownership by the staff and schools, power blues, dead batteries and a hibernating monitoring and review mechanism.

Conceived by the Haryana government in 2005, it was launched by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in May 2007 with the sole purpose of taking quality education to “deprived” schools in every nook and corner of the state.

“Initially, the Education Department marketed it to schools as a substitute for the teachers. That didn’t work. Ultimately, it did not even become an aiding tool since it doubled the work of the teachers who were expected to watch these lessons with the children and explain these to students later,” a teacher in GSSS, BC, Ambala Cantt, says.

Add to that the chronic problem of ‘dead batteries’ which has become the bane everywhere. Owing to power problem, the teachers explain that the batteries could not be charged and gradually became non-functional. “For over a year, in 2001, the programme was a complete shutdown on account of satellite shifting. After that, it never took off again with signal problem proving to be a dampener,” a teacher in GPS, Rajpura, says.

Plagued with a power problem, most of the teachers insist that the one-hour supply during school hours leaves little time to devote to EDUSAT. “The time-table cannot be altered to be made in consonance with the power supply and there is no backup available. Also, even if we make that extra effort to switch it on during that hour, there is no signal,” says a teacher of GPS, Khuda Khurd.

"We are not satisfied with its functioning but we are trying to make it work. The urban areas fair better than the rural areas. However, the problem is that an autonomous body, Utkarsh Society, runs the project and is not accountable."