Bangalore: Srei Sahaj e-Village, a subsidiary of Srei Infrastructure has partnered with Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) to offer distance learning programmes in villages, with an aim to take international quality education at affordable costs for the rural India.

Commenting on the collaboration, Hemant Kanoria, Chairman and Managing Director, Srei said "As acquiring higher degrees is directly related to greater socio-economic status, this is a powerful step towards making the growth and development of India broad-based and accessible by the hitherto, remote, marginalized and disadvantaged communities."

Higher education would be made available to the villagers through 27,000 Common Service Centres (CSCs), which are set up in the states of West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa, Tamil Nadu and Jammu & Kashmir. All courses will be accredited to IGNOU. Srei Sahaj will administer the programmes including enrollments, registration, fee collection, evaluation and will also do the certification online or manually.

Presently, there is a huge gap in the educational status of boys and girls within the rural sphere of the country, as against the urban youth. The net enrollment ratio of the rural youth stands at a mere 7.48 percent for boys and 4.5 percent for girls, which is remarkably lower than 17.84 percent and 16.9 percent respectively for urban boys and girls.

However, with the use of modern ICT platform of Sahaj available at 12,000 Gram Panchayat units, the prestigious IGNOU higher education will be made available to the rural youth in digital format at the Sahaj Common Service Centers (CSCs). The rural youth would have unprecedented prospects to acquire IGNOU's internationally recognized certification, diplomas, degrees right in their village within a distance of three kilometers from their homes at the ICT backed, computerized Sahaj CSCs.

Dr Sabahat Azim, CEO, Srei-Sahaj said, "This is a historical step to bridge the educational gap between the rural and urban India. Now parents, who for their own socio-economic reasons were diffident about sending their wards to pursue higher education can now rest easy". The Sahaj-IGNOU tie up aimed at re-engineering higher education will bring in great advantage to women and those people who cannot afford to travel and live in the cities to pursue their education.