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Kosi river belt is the graveyard of school education dreams
Even though the Kosi regularly floods its plains, children continue to go to the rickety building without a roof or boundary they have come to call a school.
Education is rightly viewed by the poor and under privileged as a passport out of misery. However, their commitment towards getting an education seems to be demanding its own pound of flesh. The Kosi river belt in this North Bihar district seems one of the few places in India where education exacts a very demanding price. The schools, if they can be called that, are ramshackle where children sit on the damp floors while battling severe heat and cold as they try to focus on studies.
Sanjana is one of the thousands who were displaced because of annual flooding of the mighty Kosi and the subsequent construction of the Grand Kosi Mahasetu. About 70,000 people in 62 villages began to migrate in 2010 after they lost land and home due to the flood, says local activist Narayan Jee Choudhary. Only a few uprooted residents got compensation.
Sanjana's "school", Utkarmait Madhya Vidyalaya, is located just below the Kosi embankment in Itahari village, about 3 kilometres from the National Highway 57. The school has a total strength of 352 students but this namesake of a school has no roof, toilet and fence.
Despite these inhuman odds, the children and their teachers continue to dream of better days when the administration would finally take note of their plight. But the echoes from the power corridors of Patna sound like white noise to them.
"Several people have asked us about the problems we face. But so far, even after so many years, nothing has changed," rued Sanjana.
The school's principal, Dashrath Prasad Yadav, pleads helplessness. "We don't have a proper school building and no boundary wall. My students are not safe here. We don't have any other option but to continue like this," Yadav said.
The Kosi river bed is the site of the annual flooding which covers thousands of acres. The farmers of this area walk a tight rope between death by starvation and death by drowning. "I owned over 60 acres of land. But all of it is now submerged in water. Which means I cannot sell any land to send my daughter to a private school for higher studies," said Sanjana's father Yogendra Mondal. And he's not alone.
Schools here are not functionally fit. Education is in shambles, even though the Nitish Kumar government claims to have built new schools in the state. Reena, a Class VII student in the Jhakarahi Dholi Middle School, confirmed. "We don't have a proper school building… it's just a broken hut. We sit on the floor. We get drenched when it rains," she said, adding "there's no protection from the heat and the cold when the seasons change".
District magistrate Baidyanath Yadav shrugged off the issue. "We don't have special funds with us for them," said Yadav, suggesting that the images of the rickety schools be shared with the administration to trigger some action.
In what reeks of typical government apathy, Seharsa divisional commissioner T N Bindhyeshwari said she wasn't aware of the condition of these schools. "I am not aware of the plight of these students. I will ask my officers to check the condition of the schools in these villages," Bindhyeshwari said.