“Lockdown Within a Lockdown”: The “Digital Redlining” and Paralyzed Online Teaching During COVID-19 in Kashmir, A Conflict Territory

During the COVID-19 pandemic, academia worldwide resorted to the remote teaching–learning alternatives in the form of online classes, virtual tutoring, and online learning software. To ensure the sustenance of education systems, educators exploited Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) to facilitate continuity in teaching at all levels. However, in the Indian-administered Kashmir region, the disputed territory between India and Pakistan, online teaching was marred by the political instability in the region, thanks to the stringent communication blockade imposed by the authorities (“Kashmir,” 2019). The Kashmir conflict dates back to the historic partition of the Indian subcontinent between India and Pakistan, after the British withdrawal in 1947. Ever since the partition, the Muslim-majority territory of Kashmir remains contested between India and Pakistan and the two nuclear rivals have fought three wars in 1947, 1965, and 1999 to consolidate control over the disputed region (Schofield, 2021).

In August 2019, Indian Parliament unilaterally removed the autonomous status of the disputed Kashmir region and to preempt any backlash, the authorities unleashed an unprecedented curfew, suspended phone networks and Internet services while putting the entire region under strict lockdown (“History’s longest,” 2019). During the lockdown, the region witnessed the longest e-curfew in history with more than 13,600 public and private educational institutes remaining closed for almost six months, restricting students and teachers to their homes with no means of correspondence with each other (Wallen, 2020). It was only in January 2020 that the government approved limited 2G-speed Internet access to 301 “white listed” websites with no access to any social media platforms (Sareen, 2020). When schools and colleges were resuming after some ease in the restrictions, the Indian government imposed a nationwide lockdown in March 2020 amid growing COVID-19 cases in the country.

Under the new guidelines, the entire education system in India, like elsewhere in the world, switched to online modes of teaching and learning. However, Kashmir turned out to be an unfortunate case where the students who were already deprived of education under strict lockdown and communication blockade for half a year faced yet another adversity; switching to online classes with limited poor 2G-Internet connectivity. For the students and teachers in the region, the lockdown imposed by the government during COVID-19 coincided with the already existing political lockdown and e-curfew. The situation turned out to be a double whammy, a “lockdown within a lockdown!”

Digital redlining is the intentional discrimination against selected communities or specific groups through unfair technological policies and practices to perpetuate inequalities of access to the Internet services, digital technologies, and digital content (Gilliard, 2017). With frequent Internet shutdowns, restricted Internet speed, and denial of access to crucial e-services, Kashmir experiences perpetual digital redlining maintained by the Indian security apparatus to consolidate its control over the region. During the nationwide lockdown, as education in the rest of the country shifted to online classes and e-learning, around 2.5 million students in Kashmir faced stiff challenges due to continued Internet restrictions and 2G’s limitations (Wallen, 2020). The crippling connectivity on the 2G network made life in Kashmir horrid for both teachers and students during lockdown. The Internet speed remained confined to a poor bandwidth of 128 kbps which was much lower than the minimum required for online classroom apps like Google Meet, Zoom, Skype, or WhatsApp video calling to function smoothly.

Moreover, the situation further worsened for online teaching during complete Internet shutdowns by the authorities on the pretext of security. The Indian government has consistently shut down Internet services in the region on the pretext of preventing “fake news,” stopping “terrorist propaganda,” and securing “national security” of India. In 2020, the year when the Internet emerged as the lifeline for the rest of the world, the Indian government shut down the Internet 70 times in the Kashmir region (Bakshi, 2020). In these situations, students suffered miserably with no classes or correspondence from their teachers. It was only after the restoration of 2G Internet by the government agencies that students could begin to communicate with their teachers.

The Education Department, admitting to the hindrances posed to online education by the Internet gag, stated that students couldn’t download reading materials over the snail’s-pace 2G Internet in the region. In May 2020, the regional schools association, PSAJK filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India demanding to lift the ban on high-speed 4G Internet in the region to allow uninterrupted access to the online classes during the COVID-19 lockdown (“Teaching in Kashmir,” 2020). The court rejected the petition and later in May, the state administration ordered the continuation of the ban on high-speed Internet citing security concerns in the interest of the “sovereignty and integrity” of India. The Internet restrictions severely affected higher education especially academic research in the region. The research scholars confined to homes felt stagnant as the poor Internet connectivity restricted them from downloading materials, corresponding to their peers, and making their research submissions. I came across many disappointed research scholars who couldn’t proceed with their theses and journal papers because they couldn’t access online resources.

Teaching journalism at the Islamic University of Science & Technology as an Assistant Professor and researching the socio-economic dimensions of Internet censorship in the region, I experienced adversity from the Internet gag that marred online education during COVID-19 in the region. Initially, we found students quite excited about the idea of online teaching as it was something new to venture into; however, the crippling Internet connectivity in the region proved to be a spoiler. One of the major problems that teachers in the region, including me, faced due to restricted Internet connectivity, was students complaining about the poor video quality hampering screen readability or not being able to hear the teacher’s voice clearly. Such problems were persistent throughout the academic session making teachers feel helpless. Uploading lectures, audio clips, and other materials was quite frustrating due to speeds as low as 2 kbps at times. My colleagues and I often stayed awake at night waiting for files to take a lifetime to upload to email and student WhatsApp groups. Equally saddening were the complaints from the students who could not download the materials, which often hampered follow-ups on class work and syllabus progress. I felt that our technically impaired online classes, in which teachers fail to recognize their students and their facial expressions on the pixilated screens, were simply a futile exercise. These dysfunctional classes consistently made me feel like a talking head in a dark room. The frustration was equally reflected back from students who were disillusioned and disinterested in online academic engagements, complaining of grainy video classes, poor sound quality, and illegible writing on the board. Such persistent issues led to a consistent decline in the number of students attending the classes online.

In one of my online classes after speaking uncut for five minutes, with an impression that students were listening keenly, I found that there was a time lag of almost three minutes due to poor connection. The students were only just receiving the audio-visual about what I had already said three minutes ago. In another incident I unintentionally made a fool of myself, speaking for longer than five minutes when I learned I was talking to a paused screen with static images of my students and that the call had dropped almost two minutes ago. While I was lecturing to an already dead class, I got a ping on WhatsApp, “Sir where are you, we are waiting! Shall we join back in the class?” Such tragi-comic experiences are vivid memories of the online classes on poor 2G network for both teachers as well as students during the COVID-19 lockdown in the Kashmir region. The situation was equally disturbing for the students in the region aspiring to sit for national-level competitions. These students complained that due to the poor Internet connectivity, they failed to attend online tutorials, reading material, and mock tests while their classmates from other states competing for the exams availed such facilities smoothly over high-speed 4G Internet. Thousands of such students in the region felt left behind and at disadvantage for the upcoming competitive exams.

In the COVID-19 era when the Internet emerged as the hope of survival and co-existence for humanity, the students and teachers in the violence-hit region of Kashmir were deprived of high-speed Internet which proved quite regressive for e-learning. The “digital apartheid” in the region on the pretext of India’s “national security” marred the educational opportunities for the millions of students in the region who felt neglected during the COVID-19 lockdown. My experience of witnessing students and teachers suffer from the challenges of crippled Internet connectivity left me with mixed feelings of irony and resilience. India’s reluctance to end Internet restrictions in the region affected online teaching and this perpetual inequality and marginalization deprived millions of students in the region of equal educational opportunities. The existence of this inequality and injustice reflects the denial of basic human rights, a mockery of net neutrality, and digital redlining in India, the “biggest democracy” on earth!

Conflict of Interest: I declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,and/or publication of this article.

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