Supaul, Bihar
As the country gradually reopens schools, there is relief, joy and excitement in most students, teachers and parents’ communities. However, in Bhojpur district of Bihar, there is anger and agitation too.
On September 1, hundreds of children from Taramani Bhagwan Saav Higher Secondary School in Koilwar and their parents staged a protest on the national highway-30 (NH-30) for over 11 hours. They were protesting against the fact that there was no place to go for the students as their 66-year-old school, which was demolished in 2019, had still not been reconstructed.
The higher secondary school was brought down to make way for a four-lane highway from Koilwar, about 40 kilometres from the state capital Patna, to Bastar in Chhattisgarh at a cost of Rs 1,700 crore. The government had promised that another location would be identified nearby and a new school building would be set up at the earliest. Nothing has happened in the past two years as educational institutes across the country have remained shut since last March due to the COVID19 pandemic.
When the students of the school returned once schools reopened in the state, they found there was no new building that had been promised to them. In protest, they along with their teachers decided to have classes right out on the pavement on the highway.
In between the classes, they protested the apathy of the government and shouted slogans: “Till arrangements are not made for a proper school, classrooms will be held on the pavements…” Without a school, the future of 1,600 children was in jeopardy, the protestors feared.
“We were forced to start classes on the roadside to demand a new school building,” Himanshu Pathak, a teacher from the school, told Gaon Connection.
Written assurance
The 11-hour protest led to bottlenecks and jams all day on NH-30. Roshan Kushwaha, the district magistrate, Kumar Mangalam, additional district magistrate, Anshul Agarwal the sub-divisional magistrate, along with a sub-divisional police officer, reached the site of protest. They spoke to the school authorities and parents and the meeting lasted from 4 pm to 9.30 pm.
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The protestors refused to budge till a written assurance was given to them that alternative arrangements would be made within 12 days for a school building for regular classes to begin, and that work will start on a new school building, that they acquiesced.
“The officers assured us that they have identified an acre and a half of land where the school building will come up and we can start our classes,” Gautam Anand, one of the school teachers, told Gaon Connection.
However, the agitation did not end there. It shifted to the Koilwar police station. The police had filed cases against nearly 50 students and others for disrupting traffic on the highway, and a tent-wala who had put up canopies to protect the protestors from the sun, was arrested. The agitators wanted those cases taken back, and they were successful in having the cases dropped, and the tent-wala was released.
More protests planned
Manoj Manjil, a young legislator from the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), had initiated the protest along with the parents of the students of the school.
“This is the start of an agitation against the government system. The state government is encouraging and supporting private schools and destroying the government school system.” Manjil said. The fact that young children are out on the streets to save their school, and protesting at police stations to save their schoolmates speaks volumes for the poor state of affairs at government education, he added. “The state government cannot absolve itself of this responsibility,” Manjil declared.
“The government demolished the school building in January 2019. It had assured the school authorities that the school would be relocated to a new location,” Muneshwar Rai, a local social worker, told Gaon Connection. But it has been two and a half years and no land has been identified for the relocated school, he added.
“A sizeable portion of the school ground was also appropriated by the government, and the sixteen hundred strong student community of this school still do not have an alternative school where they can study,” Rai said.
Students unite
When the Taramani Bhagwan Saav Higher Secondary School in Koilwar was demolished, the plus two students of the school were shifted to Kulhadiya Senior Secondary School that was four kilometers away from their own school. Which meant children had to trudge another extra four kilometres. Also, in order to get there, the students had to cross the Arrah-Patna highway, which was dangerous. Parents of the children protested and the students were shifted back to Baijnath Senior Secondary School that was closer to their old school.
The echoes of the agitation at Koilwar were felt elsewhere in the state too. “We were forced into online studies during the pandemic, and even then the state government could not provide us proper online facilities. If all of us come together then the education system in the state may improve,” Kajal from Manohar High School in Saharsa district, told Gaon Connection.
The fact that the students, their parents and teachers united to voice their protest, was encouraging, Priya, a class nine student from Williams High School in Supaul, told Gaon Connection. “It will become easier for us to ask for our rights,” she added.
According to the Union education minister, when he spoke in the Lok Sabha, 26.9 million students in the country did not have digital devices. Of them, 14.3 million were students from Bihar who had neither smartphones nor any other digital device to help them with school work. According to data from the state government there are approximately 20 million children in school in Bihar.
“It is because of the pandemic that the work on the school building has been delayed, the work on it will start very soon,” Vinod Kumar, Sub-Divisional Police Officer, Bhojpur district, told Gaon Connection.
“They have made this seem like a students’ agitation on social media,” an official from the administration, not wanting to be named, told Gaon Connection. “There has definitely been a delay due to corona, but construction of the new school has begun,” he added.
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