The beginning of the New Year witnessed the arrest of comedian Munawar Faruqui over insulting Hindu deities during a performance at a cafe in the city of Indore. However with the Indore Police reporting no such evidence and Faruqui being allegedly roughed up by the members of the group Hind Rakshak Sangathan, what took me to thinking is how easily are people being misled by choosing to hear only one side of the story.

There can be several reasons for this, namely, Ignorance, Rigidity, Biasedness, Hate and Violence. Surprisingly each of the seeds that give birth to aforementioned evils manage to get sown when the societal structure of Education takes a backseat.

This took me to examining the Annual Status of Education (ASER) report, Wave 1 of the last year, 2020 and the numbers I came across are unsurprisingly alarming yet surprisingly not being discussed about.

The digital pivot in India's schooling system had already begun pushing itself into deeper inequality since the very start of the pandemic. Millions of children with zilch internet access had been thrown into distress, leading them to the point of self-harm, giving up studies, an upsurge in vandalism and crime and child labour.

The survey clearly provides a glimpse into the levels of learning loss that students in rural India are suffering, with varying levels of access to technology, school and family resources resulting in a digital divide in education. In the wake of the pandemic, the survey was conducted via phone calls, reaching 52,227 rural households with school-age children in 30 States and Union Territories.

The top three spaces that clearly depict the plight of the rural economy have been projected by the survey with valid data points.