Parth M.N.

Sharmila Joshi

Editor

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At the end of
October last year, two slick LED television sets were mounted in two classrooms
at the zilla parishad primary school
in Sanja village. The gram panchayat had dispatched them for
use as teaching-learning aids. 

But the TV sets hang forlornly from the
walls, their screens blank. Since March 2017, for two years now, the school has
not had any electricity.

Sheela Kulkarni,
the principal of the school in Maharashtra’s Osmanabad district, says she does
not know whether to laugh or cry. “The funds coming from the government are not
enough. For a school with our enrolment number [a total of 40 students in two
classes], we get only 10,000 rupees per year for school maintenance and to buy stationery
for students. We will have to pay
around 18,000 rupees to restore power supply.”

The school’s powerlessness dates back to 2012. At that time, says an
official of the Maharashtra State Electricity Board, a  government resolution (GR) in Maharashtra
said that zilla parishad (ZP) schools
would henceforth be charged power tariffs at commercial rates (Rs. 5.86 per
kWh) instead of domestic rates (Rs. 3.36 per kWh).  

The electricity
bills of schools shot up. By the end of 2015, the power supply was cut off in
822 of 1094 ZP schools in Osmanabad district, says Sanjay Kolte, the chief executive
officer of the Osmanabad zilla parishad.
By October 2018, Kolte says, the dues had crossed Rs. 1 crore, and 70 per cent of
schools in the district were operating without electricity.

Rajabhau Giri, supervisor of
30 ZP schools in Osmanabad, says around 30 per cent – or 320
schools—of 1092 schools in this district are using solar power. These panels were
installed at a cost of around Rs. 1 lakh in each school; some of the money came
from ZP funds, the rest from public donations.

Schools in other
parts of Maharashtra are also struggling with unpaid bills. In Aurangabad district,
1,617 of 2,190 ZP schools reportedly remained without electricity (at the time
of field reporting here in February), compelling the zilla parishad to tap into solar power. 

In July 2018,
Nationalist Congress Party legislator Shashikant Shinde, reportedly told the
state Assembly that 13,844 schools in Maharashtra do not have electricity.
Activists working in the education sector believe it is a conservative
estimate. 

Responding to the
claim, Education Minister Vinod Tawde had declared in the Assembly that the
state has drawn up a scheme to supply electricity to schools at lower rates.
But the scheme does not seem to have materialised on the ground. 

Most of the
students at ZP schools in Maharashtra are from farm families, Adivasi
communities, and other low-income groups.  Zilla Parishads are district councils, which
took over primary education in Maharashtra in 1961-62. But successive state
governments have neglected the schools, and placed good quality education beyond
the reach of the poor.

The neglect is
evident in the data: in 2008-09, the amount allotted for school education was
almost 18 per cent of the total expenditure of the state government. In 2018-19,
it was down to 12.68 per cent, indicating a steady decline. 

An analysis done
by a Mumbai-based NGO, Samarthan: Centre for Budget Studies, of the state
government’s budgets of the past six years says: “In 2000, the state government
had promised the expenditure on education would be 7 per cent of the state’s
GSDP, and 75 per cent of it would be used for primary education.” But, the
paper states, the average allotment for primary education has only been 52.46
per cent. And the expenditure on education, since 2007-08, has been under 2 per
cent of the GSDP.

The neglect and
funds crunch has real outcomes. In 2009-10, ZP schools in the state
had over 1.1 million students in Class 1. Eight years later, by 2017-18, there
were only 123,739 students in Class 8 – that is, 89 per cent of the students
dropped out in between. (These are numbers obtained through
a query that I filed in June 2018 under the Right to Information Act).  (See <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/sometimes-theres-no-place-like-school">Sometimes, there&#39;s no place like school</a>)

Meanwhile, at the
Sanja ZP school, students sit with their backs to a silent TV screen, facing
their teacher Parvati Ghuge. She has a gadget, bought from a local market for
around Rs. 1,000, which magnifies the size of a mobile phone screen. The
ceiling fans above are still, everyone is drenched in sweat, but the students
valiantly try to concentrate on a video of a poem in Marathi being recited on
the mobile screen.  “We spent our own
money to buy it,” says Ghuge, about the screen magnifier.

Trying to counter
the lack of funds, other teachers have also chipped in from their own pockets.
In Osmanabad town, teachers at the ZP school for girls take their students to a
cyber café, while an ‘e-learning’ room created at the school gathers dust.

“All state scholarship
[applications] are now online,” says teacher Tabassum Sultana, sitting in the
e-learning room with 10 computers and printers covered in dust. “Our power has
been cut since August 2017. We cannot risk the students’ careers because the
school has no electricity.” For a while, the school tried to get electricity
from an adjacent construction site, but that too soon stopped. 

Bashir Tamboli,
another teacher, says unpaid electricity bills of the ZP school in Osmanabad town
are over Rs. 1.5 lakhs. “We had purchased a projector for interactive
learning,” he says, pointing to a classroom where the blank projector is
hanging on a static ceiling fan. 

Rajabhau Giri,
supervisor of 30 zilla parishad schools in Osmanabad, says the lack of funds mean several
schools don’t have security guards, clerks or cleaners. Teachers and students
have to pitch in for some of these tasks, including cleaning the classrooms.
“Parents do not like that,” he says. “Even the toilets in several schools are
not as good as they should be, and are too few. Many are without running water.
It is particularly tough on girls, especially when they grow up and start
menstruating.” 

At Yedshi village of Osmanabad,
18 kilometers from Osmanabad town, three ZP schools are next to each other,
with a common playground in between. There are just three toilets for the total
of 290 students, more than 110 of them girls. “And even these don’t have
water,” says Vitthal Shinde, 35, a labourer, whose seven-year old daughter,
Sandhya, studies in one of the schools. “She is young, so managing somehow.
What will happen when she grows up?”

Osmanabad district
is drought-prone and usually struggling for water. With the present severe
drought, borewells have run dry, and the school is forced to manage on the 500
litres a day that the gram panchayat
provides. Sandhya, standing next to her father, says the queue outside the school
toilet is always long. “Everyone lines up in recess,” she adds, as some boys
play cricket on the ground while two girls carefully fill a mug of water from a
tanker and enter the toilets. “Sometimes, the line is too long. So we fill up a
bit of water in the bottles and go to an open ground near the market.”

Her father adds that the kids know they have to
use the toilet as infrequently as possible.  “But the schools start at 10 a.m., and end at
4 p.m.  It is a long time, and it is not
healthy.”

Students also
carry their own drinking water, because that too is a problem during drought. (See <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/small-meal-big-deal-for-hungry-students">Small meal, big deal for hungry students</a>) “One day, school ran out of water,” says Sandhya. “So we went to a hotel to
drink water. Looking at so many students, the hotel owner denied us water.” 

When teachers complain about the lack
of funds, says Bhau Chaskar, activist and
teacher at the ZP school in Virgaon village of Akola taluka in
Ahmednagar district, “we are told to solicit donations
from the community.&quot; But the state-wide transfers of
teachers in June 2018 have hindered donations. In Ahmednagar, 54 per cent of ZP
teachers received transfer orders, says the district’s education officer
Ramakant Katmore. As a result, Anil Mohite, a teacher based in Akola town, was
transferred 35 kilometres away to Shelvihire village. “I don’t know anyone in
Shelvihire, neither does anyone there know me,” he says. “How do I convince
them to donate for the school?” 

The impact of the poor infrastructure on learning and
education is long-term. The Annual Status of Education Report shows that 74.3 per cent children in Class 5 in government schools of
Maharashtra could read only Class 2 text in 2008. Ten years later, that number
declined to 66 per cent.  A 2016 survey
by IndiaSpend, a data analysis portal, showed that almost 59 per cent of the students across the country preferred
private schools over government schools citing “better environment for learning&quot; at the primary level.

However, some schools
are doing well despite the government’s neglect, because of dedicated teachers
and helpful villagers. (See <a href="https://ruralindiaonline.org/articles/i-dont-feel-like-im-a-teacher">&#39;I don&#39;t feel like I&#39;m a teacher&#39; </a>) At the Saknewade
ZP school in Osmanabad, which too had its power cut off, an electricity pole
stands right outside. The school taps its power from the pole – not entirely
legally, but with the consent of villagers. 

The television
sets here are working, and 40 students, all 6 and 7 year old, learn the poems
and stories they watch on TV. As I enter the classroom, they say “good
afternoon” and their teacher Samipata Dasfalkar turns on the TV, inserts a pen
drive, and asks the students what they want to watch. Each has their preference,
but the consensus is for a poem on water and the monsoons. Students sing along and
dance as it plays on the screen. In drought-prone Osmanabad it has a special
resonance for them.

ZP schools: coping without power, water, toilets

ਬਿਜਲੀ, ਪਾਣੀ ਤੇ ਪਖ਼ਾਨਿਆਂ ਤੋਂ ਬਿਨਾ ਰੱਬ ਆਸਰੇ ਚੱਲ ਰਹੇ ਜ਼ਿਲ੍ਹਾ ਪਰਿਸ਼ਦ ਸਕੂਲ

மின்சாரம், தண்ணீர், கழிப்பறைகள் இல்லாமல் திணறும் மாவட்டப் பள்ளிகள்

জেলা পরিষদ স্কুল: যুঝে চলেছে বিদ্যুৎ, জল ও শৌচাগার ছাড়াই

जि. प. शाळा:  ना वीज, ना पाणी, ना शौचालय

বিজুলী, পানী, শৌচালয় অবিহনেই চলে জিলা পৰিষদৰ বিদ্যালয়বোৰ

बिजली, पानी और शौचालयों के बिना संचालित होते ज़िला परिषद स्कूल

ଜେଡ୍‌ପି ବିଦ୍ୟାଳୟଗୁଡ଼ିକ: ବିଦ୍ୟୁତ୍‌, ଜଳ ଏବଂ ଶୌଚାଳୟ ବ୍ୟତୀତ ଚାଲିଛି

بجلی، پانی، ٹوائلیٹ کے بغیر چلتا ضلع پریشد اسکول

Osmanabad

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ZP schools: coping without power, water, toilets

This infrastructure of zilla parishad schools in Maharashtra is going downhill due to rising bills, budget cuts and neglect, leaving teachers and students struggling. This is the fourth story in a four-part series

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