The effectiveness of PPP model is a hot topic today beyond the traditional outsourcing space. HMRI is one of the greatest working examples of this. Here we have another successful PPP model where in the e-learning space ‘IT as an enabler’ brings state-of-art teaching methods to the students of Chattisgarh. Yes that’s right – you heard it right- CHATTISGARH.
Under the project called “Gyan Vinimay”, virtual classrooms are setup and online lectures from IIT Kanpur are screened using video-conferencing facilities to the state engineering colleges. In the earlier part of this decade, there was acute shortage of faculty in these areas and the students had no access to high-quality education. This issue was thus addressed by the higher education department. The program was piloted in Govt. Engineering College, Raipur and Institute of Technology, Bilaspur. They were connected using VSAT technology from Hughes in 2006-07. Later on, four more colleges were added and connected by a terrestrial VPN over Boardband (2MBPs) BSNL for uninterrupted connectivity.
“The Private sector resources would carefully dovetailed with their commercial interests and those of the Government to provide Value Added Services” says the policy document from the Govt. of Chhattisgarh emphasizing the need of PPP in effectively implementing e-Governance solutions. The various players include initial infrastructure funding by the Higher Education Department, respective colleges pitching in for recurring costs like bandwidth charges and courseware and also funds raised in Jan Bhagidari Samitis. The Government plans to bring the 18000 colleges in e-classrooms via the “National mission on education through ICT” initiative.
