Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have interacted with school students from every corner of the country but the Bihar students missed the chance due to poor infrastructure in schools. The Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi too believed so while hitting at the Prime Minister’s address as “politicisation of education”.
“The students of Government schools in Bihar were unable to listen to the Prime Minister due to lack of infrastructure”, said Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi. Bihar with over 73 thousand Government schools has the lowest ratio of students and teachers in the country with the poorest infrastructure. Recently, it was detected that about 20,000 teachers teaching in primary schools on contract basis have submitted fake certificates to get the job.
The State Government later ordered a probe into it while taking action against such fake schoolteachers. Significantly, the Nitish Kumar Government, earlier, had attracted wide media attention for improving schools and teaching standards in the Government schools of the State. He also had announced several ambitious welfare schemes like Balika Cycle Yojna and Poshak Yojna for the students to better the enrollment in the schools.
“But, in reality nothing has been changed in the State as far as education is concerned. You can visit any Government school and feel the situation by yourself. In one building three-four schools are running even in the state capital”, said an educationist asking, “what could be more shameful than thisIJ”. The Bihar education minister Brishen Patel said that the government schools in Bihar did not have television sets or the required infrastructure to air the programme of the Prime Minister on teachers Day.
“We’re resource starved so we can not provide such facility to the school students to interact with the Prime Minister”, said Brishen Patel. However, some schools in the state do have managed television sets and arranged the required infrastructure for the Prime Minister’s programme where students watch the nearly two hours programme with much excitement and enthusiasm. Earlier, hitting out at Prime Minister’s programme to address the school students on teacher’s day, the Bihar Chief Minister had taken a dig saying “education should not be politicised”. “Education should not be politicised. It would be a wrong thing if anybody tries to do so. Our sole aim should be to provide good education to the children”, said Manjhi while addressing media persons.
However, Manjhi later added that if this would become a regular trend of for Prime Minister Modi to address students on every teacher’s day “then the state government would also make some arrangements”. Manjhi while speaking at a function on the Teachers Day also announced that Government would open one primary school for every 40 families in the State and also one higher secondary school in each panchayat.