Digital divide puts quality of this year’s degrees in serious doubt The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the faultlines in the country's higher education hampered by a frightening gap between the haves and have-nots. January 18, 2021 / 01:55 PM IST On a warm November afternoon in 2020, Shareena Banu picked up a call from a colleague who wanted to know if any of her students needed a free laptop. Banu, an assistant professor at the sociology department of Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi had several options among her undergraduate students, many of whom come from low income families across the country. "I suggested the name of one of my undergraduate students, who received an old laptop from an NGO the next day," says Banu, who obtained her doctorate in sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University over a decade ago. "He was the lucky one. There were many more in my class who would have wanted to get their first computer," she adds.