Rural Versus Urban Education In India

By Author: Swati Srivastava
Total Articles: 2
Comment this article

India is a country with diverse socio-economic and political conditions. There has been a lot of growth in the recent years. However, the growth pattern has been quite uneven which has led to a divide; a rural India and an urban India. This divide is seen in every field, whether it is consumption habits, living standards, health care or sanitary conditions. But the area where this division hurts the most is education. Rural India suffers from lack of good educational facilities and even worse than that, a lack of motivation to study. Villages, which are home to 80 percent of the population of the country, do not have proper resources for ensuring even elementary levels of education for their inhabitants. Although this situation is changing for good, but there is still a need to revamp the whole education system in the country.

Rural Education
There is no questioning the fact that India’s rural education scenario is not as good as it should have been. There are schools but do no teachers, colleges are found in scant numbers and only a couple of universities are in easy accessibility to the rural population. ...
... The main reason has been the indifferent attitude of the state authorities and lack of funds. The main occupation of people living in villages is agriculture which requires more and more physical labour. Therefore it happens many times that parent instead of sending their wards to schools take them to the fields to assist in the work. This causes a break in their studies and also demotivates the child. With economic progress and more awareness, the elementary education, which is the initial stage of schooling, is catching up in the villages. More schools are now opening up their centers in the less economically developed area. However one area which still needs a lot of work to be done is the higher education. All major colleges and institutions of higher learning are based in urban locations, often far from the rural areas. This leaves the students with only two options. Either they have to leave their homes and native place to relocate or have to resort to studying in the not-so-good colleges of their place. These colleges often do not even have basic labs and other facilities required for professional courses such as B.Tech, MCA, MBA and others.

Urban Education
The urban education scenario is direct opposite of what rural India suffers from. There are so many schools that students are spoilt for choice. There is no shortage of quality teachers as well, since everyone finds it easier to stay in cities where there is no shortage of basic amenities like electricity then to adjust to the hardships of rural areas. Higher education is also not a very scarce commodity in the city landscape. There are plenty of colleges dedicated to both professional as well as vocational courses. Finding a good MCA college in Mumbai is certainly easier than finding the same in a place like Thane-Kolshet, which is very nearby to Mumbai but tagged as a rural area. Some other trends that are found in urban education, which are in direct contrast with rural areas are:

- Urban areas give computer education very high importance where as rural areas have very few schools which are capable of giving computer training.

- Computer aided teaching is a big draw for students in urban colleges and schools.

- English is given the first priority in every educational institute in urban area. Schools and colleges in rural area still prefer the local language for teaching.

- Schools and colleges in urban regions also emphasis highly on co-curricular activities like sports, debates, cultural events whereas their rural counterparts seldom encourage students to participate in such events.