The Cockroach Janata Party’s ‘School Thik Karo’ campaign has become a much-needed citizen audit of government schools. It has tapped into a reservoir of local energy to lay bare the poor state of basic education in our country. While problems like lack of drinking water, dilapidated buildings, poor maintenance of toilets, skewed teacher-pupil ratios, and bad quality of mid-day meals come to our attention sporadically, their spontaneous exposure by local activists nationwide has helped to make it the main issue of the moment. It’s heartening that at several places pupils themselves have taken the lead through protests and social media recordings.
Launched on August 15, the audit has covered 1,500 schools within a week. A primary school near Jaipur, Rajasthan, was found functioning out of a buffalo shed because its building was unsafe.
At the Zilla Parishad school at Santuk Pimpri, Maharashtra, volunteers recorded dirty and dilapidated toilets with garbage strewn all around. In Latur, there were liquor bottles on the premises of a school. In UP, school children were having to wade through ankle-deep water to reach their classrooms. Complaints about drinking water, poor sanitation and absent teachers were universal.
Student activism is erupting across many states. School children are picketing school gates in several states, marching to collectors’ offices and posting social media videos. Remarkably, many of these protests are taking place independently of the CJP, which gives the students’ frustration a ring of authenticity and belies the authorities’ claim that the campaign is politically motivated.
Typically, the authorities’ response has been to obstruct or obfuscate. In Latur, police filed an FIR against CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke for entering a government school without permission. A teacher was made to file a case against him for allegedly obstructing her work.
In Jaipur, Rajasthan, at the school functioning out of a cattle enclosure, local goons attacked CJP volunteers and the police jumped in to lodge an FIR. At several places, school authorities hastened to clean up or take up patchwork repairs before the inspecting volunteers turned up.
Some schools hired temp teachers to make up the ratio, and in one case, brought in stand-in children in to make a respectable ratio.
The CJP campaign is bringing out the true character of India’s schooling system: that action will follow only after a shaming. In Uttar Pradesh, the Adityanath government has issued a 14-point checklist to 40,000 schools to ensure that norms are met on basic facilities, infrastructure and teaching staff.
Schools have been asked to use any available money to carry out repairs and officials have been told to monitor social media for student complaints and address them with despatch. A 360-degree check of school infrastructure has been ordered, and teachers have been warned not to go AWOL.
India’s bureaucrats as a class hates it when citizens ask to audit their performance, trotting out the excuse that it gives scope to vigilantes and interferes with their normal duties.
The state education department of Rajasthan has gone to the extent of restricting the entry of outsiders into government schools and banning videography and livestreaming from the premises.
But Gen Z is in no mood to listen. When schools are paid for by public money, they feel justified in asking to see if the people are really being served.