The murky side of city schools

A government school in east Delhi paid Rs two lakh to Delhi Jal Board for water during 2010-11 winter months but none of its students got water for drinking.

Updated on: Apr 18, 2011, 22:55:21 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A government school in east Delhi paid Rs two lakh to Delhi Jal Board for water during 2010-11 winter months but none of its students got water for drinking.

This is one of the revelation from series of Right To Information (RTI) applications filed in government schools in east Delhi to find out efficacy of the Right To Education (RTE) law and corruption in education.

The government school in Trilokpuri had paid Rs two lakh as water bill for six months but the students of the schools testified that they did not got drinking water.

“The students will repeat their testimony infront of senior Delhi government officials on Wednesday,” said an official of National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), which is conducting a public hearing on about 800 complaints on implementation of the RTE from the Capital. The NCPCR is the nodal authority under the law to monitor its implementation and is holding first such public consultation with the NGO Joint Operation for Social Help (JOSH).

Another victim of corrupt education system was a Muslim woman in east Delhi (name withheld to protect identity of the child) had to pay a bribe of Rs 500 and got Rs 1,000 scholarship meant for children from minority community.

In fact, she should have got Rs 2,000 as she had two children studying in the school but when she complained to the school, she was turned away. “Take whatever you got or we will throw your children out,” an official in the school told her. Now, her complaint is part of the NCPCR’s public hearing.

In another case, a student was badly injured when he fell down in his classroom left unattended by the teacher. When students of his class reported the injury, the school administration instead of arranging for immediate medical attention, kept him in the school while they send out two students to inform his grandmother.

By the time his grandmother and aunt reached the school, he was unconscious with the pain and later admitted AIIMS Trauma center. AIIMS reported that the case had turned into a critical nature due to the delay in the patient getting medical attention. His hand has suffered a damage of a permanent nature and even after six months of this incident, he is still undergoing treatment. His old grandmother only hopes that his is able to lead a normal life after this.

Amit (name changed), a student of VII in the government school in Trilokpuri, has a complaint of different order. He complained to his class teacher about some of his classmates smoking in the class. Instead of listening to him, the teacher allegedly slapped him, resulting in an injury to his ear. For him, the lesson was never to complain about a wrong.

NCPCR has summoned senior officials from Delhi government and municipal corporation of Delhi in a bid to provide instant justice to the complainants.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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