Topic: Digital Divide

What accompanies the gun battles are long periods of no data services, sometimes lasting even months. The Central government’s decision to abrogate article 370, last year in the month of August resulted in six months of data suspension which was later restored on 25th January this year, but only limited to 2G services.

On 1 June, Devika Balakrishnan, a 14-year-old Dalit student from Kerala's Malappuram ended her life over not being able to attend online classes after her daily wage-earner father, blighted by ill health and lack of work during the lockdown, failed to repair the TV on which she was to attend virtual classes that began on Monday.

In fact, Kerala's politics of progress has long hijacked movements of the marginalized or has silenced their narratives. This is the same politics that attaches tags like 'secular', 'peaceful' and 'egalitarian' with the state's identity, misusing them to erase from the collective memory, incidents like the Beemapally and Muthanga firing. This politics of erasure of experiences of the marginalized is what has led to the killing of Devika.

The 10th standard student, identified as Devika of Irimbiliyam Govt Higher Secondary School in Malappuram district took the drastic step because she could not attend online classes.

The university should stop pretending that things are normal, no they are not and we cannot make them normal by refusing to acknowledge human needs.

On 7 April 2020, students of the Pondicherry Central University took to twitter the issue of online classes and assignments, which created a divide amongst the students. They trended the hashtags #StopDigitalDivide and #SuspendOnlineClasses which were retweeted by hundreds of twitter handles include students, faculties and activists.