The massacre of government schools
Government schools are in news again. The only time when government schools feature in news is when they are due to be closed. Reports in the media say more than 3000 schools have been closed and more would down the shutters soon. Primary and Higher primary education minister N Mahesh has said they’d ensure the government schools are not closed for whatever reasons. Governments in the past gave similar assurances but then they could hardly stick to their promise.
Governments assure that the schools won’t be closed. But the unsaid meaning in this is ‘if they close, remember we weren’t responsible’. If the attendance of children consistently drops in a government school, they’d obviously be rendered useless and shut down sooner or later. Our politicians know this well. None of the schools in our state closed by themselves. There is an organized conspiracy behind this. If you starve a person to death, doesn’t that amount to murder? Similar is the situation with schools.
The basic infrastructure of the school is consistently destroyed, and no new measures are initiated to ensure they begin to work well. When they do not respond to the needs of modern times, schools will obviously go into the oblivion. And this act is carried out by the governments. All parents send their kids to school with the hope that they’d be well prepared to earn a livelihood for themselves in the future and be ready to face challenges too.
Hence, they choose the schools with much care. If they feel government schools are not meeting the needs of their children’s future, they’d obviously take their children to other schools.
There must be some significant reason behind making private schools inevitable for parents, by way of weakening the government schools despite supply of books, mid day meals, free uniform and books etc.
Government is probably playing a role in this closure too. While some schools are being shut down, some of them are being adopted by wealthy corporates who have set their eyes on the most valuable land on which the schools stand. But then, some organisations, social servants and volunteers are really doing a good job of running defunct government schools better than the government itself.
At the same time, some vested interests are planning to materialize their plans on this occasion when the schools are being rendered useless. This ‘adoption scheme’ is being used really well by some organisations. Today, some schools are much like children who are not wanted by either of the parents. And in private space, parents are struggling to meet the expenses of kids getting into nursery and primary, forget even higher classes. If the schools shut down, children coming under BPL category will have a tough time accessing education. Even the middle class will have to fall prey to costly education. Kannada, the language, will hardly have any chances of survival. In the future, there’d be clear demarcation between the ones that can afford education and the ones that cannot. This would increase the difference between the haves and have nots.
Even if the government worries one little bit about the people in bottom most rung of the society, it should not allow closure of government schools ever.
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MP: 7-year-old girl raped and murdered; minor relative detained
Barwani (MP), Jan 28 (PTI) Police on Wednesday detained a 17-year-old relative of a seven-year-old girl in Barwani district of Madhya Pradesh for allegedly raping her and killing her by throwing her into a canal, a police official said.
Superintendent of Police Jagdish Dawar told reporters that the body of the child was recovered from the Indira Sagar Canal on January 26, following information from residents of a village in the Rajpur police station area of the district.
He said the post-mortem report concluded severe injuries to the girl’s private parts and attributed her death to drowning.
Dawar said a 17-year-old boy, a close relative of the girl, has been detained in connection with the rape-murder.
The teenager told the police that he kidnapped the girl from her home on the night of January 25 while her family members were asleep, took her to a nearby canal and raped her, according to the official.
When the girl started screaming during the sexual assault, the minor boy allegedly threw her into the canal, with the intention of killing her. The child drowned in the water body, the official said.
The detained minor will be produced in a juvenile court.
A case has been registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and an investigation is underway, he added.
