Missing: boundary walls, bathrooms, blackboards

On August 10, Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), said in a video that since Independence, no government has been able to provide students in rural areas with the same facilities as those available to students in urban areas.

He pledged to begin checking schools in the district from which he hails, Hingoli in Maharashtra, and request sarpanchs to improve the situation. “We have constructed a new Parliament and a new residence for the Prime Minister.

Why, then, are we not able to construct new schools in our villages? Do we not consider the children of farmers and labourers as the future of our country,” he asked. Since August 15, the CJP’s ‘School thik karo (reform schools)’ campaign has shone a spotlight on the condition of schools across States, with issues ranging from broken roofs to a lack of washrooms and drinking water.

It asked locals to participate in a three-step audit of schools: ‘download a checklist, conduct the audit, and submit and tag us’. The checklist includes questions about whether the school has drinking water, boundary walls, wash rooms, and midday meals.

At Dumri Kewat Tola primary school, in Muzaffarpur district in north Bihar, the plaster sometimes falls in the corridor outside the two classrooms. “We dread walking on this veranda,” says one teacher. All the 119 students crowd into the pink building, which was painted six months ago but is already peeling.

They share space with two goats, which play on the corridor, and occasionally wander in to be petted. Under the crumbling roof of the corridor stand two motorcycles — they belong to the teachers. Also Read | FIR registered against Abhijeet Dipke for ‘entering government school without permission, threatening teachers’ “The school was established in 1982, but there is no boundary wall, no wash room, no sports ground, and no space to store the midday meal supplies,” says the headmaster, Sanju Kumar.

He travels 15 kilometres daily, one way, to reach the village. The six teachers of the school use the neighbours’ bathrooms, they say, but the children must simply go in the open, or not at all. The school has no space to build, say the teachers.

At the middle school, a kilometre away, at Budhnagra Jagannath Malikana Tola, established in 2002, there are 10 teachers and 283 students. The principal, Umesh Ram, is sad that the school has only two rooms. Students of Class 8 sit on the veranda, and those of Classes 1 and 2 under a tree behind the kitchen.

The teachers complain about space constraints and the fact that the area floods in the rains. The students say their midday meal is tasteless. “Sometimes there are insects in it. We want our food to be better,” says one student.

The district education officer says he has written to his superiors in Bihar’s Education Department about the schools’ demands. In the adjoining Vaishali district, the primary school at Mirpur Pathad Rajdeo Rai Ka Tola does not even have a building of its own.

It runs in a community centre, established in 2014. The school, from Classes 1 to 5, runs in a single room, which is also stuffed with rows of department almirahs and midday meal utensils, tables, and broken chairs. The students sit on new benches.

There are 91 students and three teachers, including the headmaster, Vinod Kumar. “The school has no playground, no wash room, no kitchen shed, nothing at all,” says Uday Kumar, a teacher who travels about 40 km every day to reach the school by motorcycle.

“You can imagine the difficulties we face here every day. When more students come to school than the space allows, they have to sit under a huge banyan tree nearby to study,” says Kumar. The Block Education Department of Rajapakar could not be reached.

On its department website, the Bihar government proclaims, “Education is the pillar upon which the fate of a country depends.” In Unchki village in Rajasthan’s Deeg district, there is no public road to the Rajkiya Prathmik Vidyalaya, which is blocked by a graveyard on one side and high boundary walls on the other.

Locals say students have no option but to walk through the graveyard. From there, they traverse a thin, muddy path, surrounded by overgrown plants and shrubs, to go to school. A student of Class 3 says, “Bach bach ke aana padhta hai.

Keechar bohot hai (We have to come cautiously; it is very muddy).” Students say corridors are their classrooms. One student says, “The teacher teaches both Class 4 and 5 together.” This is either because there are not enough rooms in the building to accommodate all of them or no electricity.

The district falls under the National Capital Region and is only 165 km from Delhi.