Mohsin Mehraj, a student from a Bangalore college, returned home early March after the outbreak of coronavirus. He is finding it difficult to keep pace with the rest of his classmates from other states, during e-classes his college has started, owing to to low speed ort 2G internet in Kashmir.
Unlike Mohsin, his classmates have uninterrupted high speedinternet at their respective homes.
Mohsin said like many other students he is losing track ofthe online classes due to low internet speed which is affecting his studies.
“Our college is using applications like zoom and othere-learning platforms. For us it is impossible to keep pace with the rest of ourclassmates who have access to high speed internet,” he said.
Recently, he said, one of his teachers was showing a slideshowon a topic during the online class. “But I couldn’t keep pace with the classdue to low internet and missed the topic,” Mohsin said.
Like Mohsin, many other students pursuing higher educationin outside colleges and universities said that downloading study material,attending virtual classes and accessing online lectures had been nearlyimpossible for them due to the low speed internet.
Taha Firdous Shah, who is pursuing Bachelor’s at St Stephens Delhi said they have to compromise on most of the occasions while attending online classes from Kashmir.
“Just to download an audio file or other study material, ittakes a complete night. Due to the low speed internet, we are unable tointeract with our teachers via video conferencing. It kills the basic purposeof virtual classes,” Taha Said.
Not only students but teachers are also unable to conductonline classes properly due to the low speed internet.
“Maximum students in our batch at Institute of HotelManagement (IHM) Rajbagh are non-Kashmiris. Following the covid19 lockdown theyleft for their respective states. Since most of our teachers are Kashmiri theyare not able to conduct classes properly and the students outside are sufferingdespite them having the proper internet speed,” Sana Imtiyaz, a student of IHMsaid.
These students said their colleges were mulling to conductexams online if the covid19 lockdown gets further extended. “If that happens,we fear we may miss our exams,” they said.