The Upgraded Project Upper Primary (PUP) School in Nathama, which is hardly five km from Rayagada headquarters town, has 16 tribal girls and 48 boys in the attendance roll.
On the Children’s Day on Tuesday, there was no hustle bustle in the school like its counterpart in the town where this day is celebrated in a grand way at the play ground of the Gobinda Chandra Deb High School.
There are welcome gates, a stage decorated with flowers, a bunch of flex banners, announcement through loudspeakers and a lCD projector for the students, teachers and bureaucrats of the district sitting on chairs to listen to the message of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
Nathama does not have a motorable road. Neither has it electricity, though there is a dilapidated residential hostel attached to it with a strength of 40. The iron windows of the rooms have big holes and sometimes snakes creep in. The building is not whitewashed since last few years. The toilets constructed by the SSA are defunct because of faulty design. There are two kids amusement slides- one constructed with cement and the other with cast iron, but both are badly damaged and of no use. It has to be noted that the school has a provision from Class-I to VIII.
“Mostly children from class VII and VIII do not stay back to study in this school as they go to the residential schools nearby run by the SSD Department,” said headmaster of the school Janakiram Sahu.
In spite of many other infrastructure deficits in the school, one could notice the enthusiasm of the neatly dressed tribal kids and the teachers. The discipline was reflected from the tiny girl students sitting in the front with butterfly clips on their heads, the organized keeping of slippers/chappals on the school varendah and a clean and serene surrounding. Though there was no sound system available, the rhythmic clapping by the students after the speech of the teachers regarding the relevance of day was really enchanting. No flex banner or welcome gate, but simple writing on the wall mounted black board was a real boost for the tribal kids.
Though many students could not tell properly about CM’s programme, the enthusiastic teachers paraded all the pupils to the house of the school peon, who hails from the same village where the school was situated. Though the room was very congested, it was not at all a restraint for both teachers and students to see the CM in the TV and listen to his messages.