Arvind Subramanian's course on India's economy a major draw on HRD ministry's web learning portal

NEW DELHI: A course on Indian economy by the Union government’s chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian, which includes lessons on demonetisation - announced by the Narendra Modi government in 2016- has emerged as one of the most popular courses on the Ministry of human resource development’s web learning portal.

Sources said that 5,061 people—including students and working professionals—have enrolled for the course so far on the website Swayam, India’s massive open online course portal, which is significant in comparison to most other courses on offer.

“The course is largely based on Subramanian’s lecture series in Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi last year that was attended by economics teachers at top colleges in Delhi and has been a major draw on our online learning portal,” said a senior official in the higher education department of the ministry.

“There are several courses on offer, mostly by top IIT faculties but many of them do not have more then 500-1000 enrolments. In comparison, this programme has outshined many of those in terms of popularity,” the official also said.

The self-paced course—which allows the students to complete it without any fixed time frame—is titled “Contemporary themes in Indian economic development and economic survey—and offers reading material apart from recorded video talks.

The course, which includes chapters on monetary and fiscal policy, agriculture, inflation, challenges for Indian economy apart from demonetisation and other topics, also has six tests to assess the understanding of students enrolled for the programme.

Swayam, an indigenously developed IT platform to bridge the digital divide in education has offered about 900 self-paced or scheduled courses since its launch in July 2017. It hosts courses by the best of faculty which can be accessed free of cost by school or college students or even working professionals in India and abroad. 

While some courses are supplementary and just to gain knowledge, others allow students to obtain certificates following successful completion of the course. The HRD ministry plans to offer over 2,000 programmes and 80,000 hours of learning covering school, undergraduate, post-graduate, engineering, law and other professions in next two years.