XYZ of ABCD

Have the planners of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan taken into account how the poor students will be transported to schools?

Vijay Sanghvi Delhi

Bhola, 13, is a smart and ambitious boy studying in seventh class at the government secondary school no 2 at Kalkaji, Delhi. Often, he fumes with rage when his class teacher hurls abuses not only at him but also at his mother and sister. "I feel like hitting my teacher with a stone but I know the result. I would be rusticated and no school would then admit me," says Bhola.

Bhola and some of his colleagues have to walk or often run a distance of three kilometres from their homes to their school. The Rural Transport Vehicle (RTV) that runs on the Okhla road, linking his home to the school, is the only transport available in the area. If they board this bus, they are kicked out for failing to pay the Rs 2 fare to the conductor. Three dons control all RTVs operating in this sector. Their conductors have strict instructions to collect fares from all students. "Sir, these mini buses are small and if several children climb into them, there would be no space for other passengers. So we incur double loss by allowing school children a free ride every day,’ says Ramadin, a RTV bus conductor. He also admits that some conductors collect fares from the children and pocket the money without issuing tickets. The police, on the other hand, turn a deaf ear to the plight of the students.

The Okhla slum, where Bhola lives, is perhaps the biggest in Asia, accommodating around 50,000 families and spread over five acres of government land. Most of the people living here are temporary or seasonal jobbers, unable to pay high rents outside the slum. Nearly 30,000 people have built their own hutments and live in tin sheds without ventilation. Even the rented huts are of the same size. The area emits an unbearable stench of human excreta and urine, making it difficult for an outsider to even breathe in this nauseating atmosphere.

Politicians of different hues are interested only in the nearly 60,000 votes they can get from here, and come only when the elections are due. They do almost nothing for the development of this slum, leaving the people at the mercy of con men who call the shots in this area.

There is no privacy in this crowded slum. Hence, children grow up aware of what is going on around them. Bhola can reel out the detailed history of all his neighbours, their addictions, their weaknesses, and from where they procure cheap liquor and narcotics. Smart and intelligent as he is, he does not want to get involved with the police who frequent the slum to try and control the fights and fisticuffs which are routine in this area.

The outside public has tried to help but its role is limited. Some recreation facilities for the young are provided by the Creativity School run by a NGO at the community centre in the slum. About 150 boys spend their mornings at the school, not learning reading, writing and counting but crafts that may be useful to them in future. Also, 60 boys take shifts in the van that comes with 10 computers for four hours everyday, courtesy a builder discharging his social responsibility.

The government and educationists insist that all children must have the right to attend school. The parliamentary committee is even debating whether parents who fail to send their children to school under the Right to Education Bill now before the Parliament, should be punished. But there is no mention of how the children living in places far from their schools be transported to the schools and back home.