COVID-stunted educations dim prospects for India’s economy and its youth

Some children have forgotten the alphabet or what their classrooms look like. Others have dropped out of school entirely, scrounging for work and unlikely to ever resume their studies.

For years, India has been counting on its vast pool ofyoung people as a wellspring of future growth, a “demographic dividend,” asmany liked to put it. Now, after two years of the coronavirus pandemic, it islooking more like a lost generation, crushing the middle-class dreams offamilies looking for better opportunities for their children.

Hundreds of millions of students across India havereceived little to no in-person instruction with schools intermittently shutdown since the start of the pandemic. As pandemic restrictions are lifted, thenreimposed, schools are often the first places to close and the last to reopen.

Mahesh Davar, a farmhand in central India, is painedto see his young sons working beside him. He and his wife toiled in the fieldsto send their boys, now ages 12 and 14, to school, hoping it would secure thembetter jobs and easier lives.

Their education effectively ended almost two yearsago, when schools shifted online; the family lacked the money for internetaccess. Around the globe, more than 120 million children have faced the samesituation, according to the United Nations.

“Poor people like us fight every day to keep the stoveburning,” Davar said. “Tell me how and where we will afford the money formobile phones?”

Until the pandemic, India was pulling millions ofpeople out of poverty, pinning its hopes of greater economic growth on education.That building block for the future is now eroding, threatening to upend India’shard-fought progress and condemn another generation to manual, off-the-bookslabour.

“In India, the numbers are mind-numbing,” said PoonamMuttreja, head of Population Foundation of India, an advocacy group in NewDelhi. “Gender and other inequalities are widening, and we’ll have much more ofa development deficit in the years to come.”

Many countries are weighing the trade-offs betweenchildren’s education and public health. As omicron has spread across the UnitedStates and Europe, officials have struggled to figure out how and when to keepschools open.

In South Asia, Sri Lanka has decided against closingschools, while in Nepal, they are shut until at least the end of this month,despite the near impossibility of remote instruction in the Himalayancountryside. Swamped with new infections, Bangladesh reversed an earlierdecision to allow vaccinated pupils to attend class, closing schools down forall students.

The repercussions can be especially dire in SouthAsia. Girls are entering into child marriages, and boys have abandoned theireducation to work.

The Rev. Nicholas Barla, a Catholic priest who hasspent decades working with schools in rural communities, said that duringrecent travels to remote corners of India, he witnessed children reeling fromboredom and isolation.

“The mental growth that should have taken placestopped,” he said. “It is tragic, because education is the only path leadingout of darkness and the miseries of rural poverty.”

India’s working-age population is projected to peak at65% in 2031 before it begins to decline. It’s a potential asset that IndianPrime Minister Narendra Modi has celebrated, as recently as this month.

“The strength of the youth will take India to greaterheights,” he declared at a youth festival.

Typically, a large share of the population enteringthe workforce would be an economic boon. Now, it could prove a burden, asundereducated and underemployed people in a welfare state such as India end upconsuming a larger share of resources, from free medicine to food subsidies.

The ranks of the underemployed are already swelling inIndia’s capital, New Delhi, which draws young people from villages across thecountry seeking economic opportunity. Many of them sleep on sidewalks, warmthemselves next to big pots of boiling chai and stand every morning at adesignated pickup place for daily labourers.

In a gritty corner in the old part of the citylittered with clay teacups and spent beedis, Briju Kumar jostled with dozens ofothers hungry for a day’s work at a construction site. At 14, he abandonedonline studies during a partial lockdown last year to contribute to thefamily’s finances.

“If schools open, I’m not sure I will go back. Only ifthere is no work,” he said.

His family migrated from Bihar, one of India’s pooreststates, when Briju was in the fifth grade so that his father, who neverattended school, could earn more money driving an auto rickshaw. Intermittentlockdowns forced the elder Kumar off the roads and his son out of school.

Even before the pandemic, India was failing to keep upwith the millions of new workers entering the job market each year, with growthnot translating into job creation.

“It’s not that we were doing really well on the way tothe demographic dividend before COVID,” Muttreja said.

It might be about to get a lot worse. The World Bankestimates that India stands to lose as much as $440 billion in future earningspotential in the aftermath of the pandemic.

During the pandemic, young workers have been mostaffected when lockdowns and other economic disruptions occur, facing higher joblosses and less financial support, according to a study by the InternationalLabour Organization. In the years ahead, even if a rebound in economic growthcreates new jobs, there may not be qualified employees to fill them.

“At the beginning of the pandemic, it was digital,digital, digital, which is fine if you’re a more middle-class, urban child,”said Terry Durnnian, UNICEF’s education chief in India. “But if you’re talkingabout rural children, children with disabilities, migrant children, tribes,they lose out,” he said.

“The learning loss is huge,” he added. “Children arenot getting skills or knowledge to move forward in life.”

Remote education has been offered widely in India, but4 out of 10 students lack the necessary internet connectivity to attend. Andonline teaching, particularly in public schools, has been largely availableonly for older students.

Across India, 1.5 million school closings haveaffected 247 million children in elementary and secondary schools, according toa UNICEF study. And as the pandemic drags on, more and more students havedropped out. A survey of 650 households in the western Indian cities of Mumbaiand Pune found that enrolment in virtual preschools dropped by 40% as of lastsummer compared with before the pandemic.

Rupesh Gaikwad, who works as a grocery store clerk inthe western state of Maharashtra, said he enrolled his 5-year-old daughter,Nisha, in preschool two years ago.

“Our daughter has never set foot in the classroom. Shethinks the mobile phone is her school, because there has been no realinteraction with teachers or other students, apart from seeing them on the mobilephone screen,” he said. “What we are giving our children these days is noteducation for overall development but trying to keep them busy, knowing verywell this is bad for their future.”

Even before the pandemic, India’s education system waswoefully inadequate, with many public schools in rural areas short of teachersand books. Less than half of students possess the reading and math skills toprogress to the next grade.

Now, India’s spending on education — already far lowerthan wealthier countries — has been slashed even more. According to the WorldBank, government spending on education fell from 4.4% of gross domestic productin 2019 to 3.4% in 2020.

With schools closed, more children are also goinghungry. Many families rely on free school lunches to help meet their children’snutritional needs.

During India’s first two waves of the pandemic,children were largely forgetting more than they learned, UNICEF found. Armedwith this data, UNICEF has lobbied state governments, which oversee education,not to close schools.

But as COVID-19 infections soared in India, big citiesclosed schools again last month. Rural India followed suit.

Anuradha Maindola, a lawyer in the north Indian stateof Uttarakhand, said her two children, Rudra and Ishita, had only spent about amonth in physical classrooms since the Indian government’s first lockdown inMarch 2020.

She decided to have 8-year-old Ishita, who isstruggling to read and write, repeat the first grade.

“My children were learning nothing online,” she said.

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