Impact of Informal Online Learning on the Lives of Tribal Women: An Ethnographic Study from Central India

Abstract

Technology has a significant impact on our daily lives. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, we were not adequately aware of the use of technology, either in academia or otherwise. After the pandemic, we have been forced to depend on technology for everything. Tribal women in India are deprived of their social, economic, and political rights. Hence, they are in rampant state of poverty and do not have minimum needs to survive. This prevents them from engaging in traditional learning activities. Despite of these limitations, few of them do possess android phones in order to fulfil their essential need of telephonic engagement with their friends and peers. However, it is through these devices that they can most conveniently engage in informal learning through technology and thus, informal technological learning is highly beneficial to tribal women. The article draws its inferences from both primary and secondary sources of data. The primary data is gathered through a field study among the Gond and Panika tribal women from Lalpur village of Pushprajgarh, Anuppur District of Madhya Pradesh. The village is an adjacent to IGNTU campus. The secondary data is gathered from published and unpublished sources, online materials, and other related literature from magazines, newspapers, and reports of government and non-government agencies. The thrust of the article is to explain the use of technology and its benefits to tribal women in their day-to-day life situations.