Every new academic year, school students and their parents are facing problems pertaining to shortage of textbooks, whether it be Central Board or State Boards. To solve this age-old problem, an Ahmedabad-based NGO has come out with a suggestion of releasing digital copies of the text books on the websites of education departments and leading schools, so that the e-books can easily be accessed by parents and students on time.
The National Council for Civil liberties (NCCl) has in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggested releasing of digital copies of the textbooks on the websites of education departments and even schools, so that the e-books can easily be accessed by students and in the case of non-availability of textbooks in the market, they can easily get printouts.
“This is the season of reopening of schools all over the country and the parents, often line up before the designated bookshops to buy text books for their children. And the most common problem they face is that the books are often out of print and/or not available and the children have to wait for weeks and months before they can lay their hands on the textbooks,” said VK Saxena, president of NCCl, adding that sometimes due to short supply of textbooks, they are sold on premium forcing parents to bear extra cost.
Saxena said that it affects their ability to cope up with the syllabus and has an overall effect of slowing down the system and bringing enormous parental anxiety. Every year it is happening, because the Government printing presses have to work overtime to print the copies of text books and transport the goods all over the country through their logistic networks, he added.
“It is a hugely centralised logistic exercise. Nowadays, computer access is very wide and if the textbooks are uploaded on websites and allowed downloading of digital copies of text books, parents can arrange for printed copies to their children and nobody suffers by this. It is an archaic idea that textbooks are still to be printed centrally by a Government department and should be responsible for the distribution in the country,” said NCCl chief.
Decentralising this operation will not only speed up the distribution, but will also bring about timely access to the study material, cost saving, time and energy saving of the concerned departments responsible for finalisation of tenders for printing and distribution of text books and no room for corruption in printing and distribution system, he said adding that this is an important issue that has been allowed for long to haunt the common man, but can easily be disposed off with a simple solution.
According to him releasing digital copies of the text books on the websites of education departments and even schools could trigger local business opportunities for printing the books in colour in any required format by the local entrepreneurs to keep up with the requirements. Apart from this it would save millions of rupees of the education department which can be utilized for up gradation of schools and other education related infrastructure, he said in the letter.