Prisoners in the Nagpur central jail who have taken up academic courses will now have their queries answered by the teachers via a new radio program started for them exclusively. The ‘mediated phone-in radio counselling’ has been launched by the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and will help the prisoners to carry their academics without compromising the jail security.
IGNOU has been offering academic courses to the prisoners from quite sometime but earlier, this student-teacher interactive facility was not available as prisoners do not have access to the phones in the jail, he said.
“To circumvent this difficulty, an innovative method has been adopted by IGNOU here. Prisoners will now listen to lessons imparted by teachers on the FM radio channel. They will write their doubts/queries on a paper and give it to the IGNOU’s jail coordinator. The coordinator will immediately call the Gyan Vani studio from the jail office phone and read out the prisoner’s queries. The teacher in the studio will then provide answers on the radio channel” he added.
This facility will be quite beneficial for the for the prisoner who wants to study as this provides an opportunity for two communication between the teacher and the student.