“I don’t want to stifle entrepreneurship…but because they are stepping into a public space, because they are providing a public service and education is a public service, there has to be regulation. It’s not purely a private play. There has to be some sort of overarching regulation, oversight and we need to create the mechanism. If schools, colleges all have that oversight, Ed Tech must also have that oversight,” says Member of Parliament Karti P Chidambaram commenting on the issues with Ed-Tech companies and their operations in India.
In an exclusive interview with MediaNama, Karti Chidambaram emphasises on the need for regulation of the Ed-tech space too to keep up with the fast-paced digitisation of the public education sector and to tackle the unchecked aggressive selling practices employed by Ed-tech companies.
“You can’t be buccaneering pirates (in the name of innovation). Why subject physical people who build brick and mortar institutions? Why do you subject them to go through all kinds of hoops?…What is so holy about technology? That because you’re in the technology space because we’ll stifle your innovation so we won’t regulate you, but if you are actually going to go build something physically then, you need to come under all kinds of regulations. How is that fair?”, he questions.
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On January 27, he wrote a letter to the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) urging the body to take note of consumer grievances against aggressive selling practices by Ed-tech employees and their financial and emotional impact on the students and parents. This was his fourth letter in two years about the exploitation of Indian consumers by Ed-tech majors, a problem that the Education Ministry, Consumer Affairs Ministry and ASCI has also took note of.
In this interview he speaks at length about what are these issues, why the current self-regulatory approach is not fruitful and why we haven’t seen any government action on this front despite numerous media reports highlighting it multiple times.
Note: The headline was updated on February 14, 2023 at 2:55 PM after editorial input
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Also Read:
- Ed-Tech Companies Use Ads To Exploit Parents’ Guilt: Karti Chidambaram Writes To ASCI
- Why MP Karti Chidambaram Wants A Serious Fraud Probe Into Byju’s
- Byju’s Is Operating Like A Loan Shark, Needs To Be Monitored: MP Karti Chidambaram
- Self-Regulation Failing To Control Unfair Trade Practices By Ed-Tech: Karti P Chidambaram
- Inability To Curb Unfair Trade Practices May Invite Government Regulation: Union Warns Indian Ed-Tech Regulator
