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Covid-19 impact: School lockdowns have robbed a generation of upward mobility
School Children’s Online and Offline Learning, or SCHOOL, survey, overseen by a group of economists including Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, shines a spotlight on the biggest losers of lockouts: the poor. At the family level, there is reasonably high access to smartphones: 77% in urban areas, and 51% in villages, just what one would expect in a country witnessing a digital revolution of sorts amid crashing handset and data prices. Yet, even among households that possess internet-enabled devices, the proportion of children who’re regularly studying online dwindles to 31% in cities and 15% in villages. The wage-earner’s claim on the phone clearly outweighs its utility as an educational device.