A corona-season online lesson on change for CPM
Changing with the times is not a familiar concept for the Communist parties in India, a reason why their electoral fortunes have dwindled over the years. These parties have shown a remarkable ability to stick to age-old dogmas and change only when the rest of the world has moved far ahead.
The CPM’s stand on the use of digital teaching methods to resume academic activities amid the Covid-induced lockdown is a case in point. The party Politburo, after an online meeting on Wednesday, issued a statement that the Centre is using the lockdown to “implement its retrograde education policy, unapproved by Parliament, and impose digital teaching/learning methods”. It said digital methods cannot replace traditional teaching and the strategy could further the digital divide.
Interestingly, the party-led government in Kerala has been aggressively implementing online teaching after resuming classes for school and college students on June 1. Understandably, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, a Politburo member himself, was at pains to defend his government’s decision on online teaching vis-a-vis the party’s stand. At his daily briefing on Wednesday, the CM said online classes were getting a good response, but added they were a temporary measure.
One of the things that became apparent during the Covid crisis is the inadequate digitisation of our education system. Classes had to be discontinued and exams stopped midway when the country went into lockdown. This is an opportunity to digitally secure the campuses from future crises of this kind. This is a chance to bridge the digital divide, not to make it an excuse to resist progress.
Taking a step in this direction, the Kerala government has told the High Court it will make sure all students have access to online lessons by June 14. The CPM must realise the days when it could hold protests against something like computerisation and get away with it are gone. The party’s aging doctrines are not strong enough to stop people from embracing technology. It must shake off its caveman tendency to resist change of any kind and adapt to modern society.