Publicado: 31 octubre 2020 a las 1:00 am
Categorías: Noticias Asia
India/October 31, 2020/Source: https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/
Most people here seem to have abandoned the toilets and gone back to open ground. High School teachers cannot point at Delhi on a map; graduates vote to elect a MLC but have no idea of the Council
As I drove on National Highway 77, which connects Patna to Sonbarsa on the Nepal border, Sitamarhi District welcomes visitors with an overhead gantry signboard to the first ODF (open defaecation free) district of Bihar. But signboards, I discovered, are easier to put up than making the place Open Defecation Free. Mounds of human excreta dotted the paddy fields, orchards and embankments of waterbodies.
Three years ago, at the peak of a ‘Swacch Bharat’ blitz, accompanied by daily reminders through the media, village level teams of minders, police and administrative machinery were galvanised to instill the healthy habit and invoke a sense of dignity about the use of toilets. Toilets were constructed at a scorching pace. The state looked ready for a makeover.
As the guard was lowered following Lok Sabha elections, the pandemic induced lockdown and now the assembly election,open defecation, I was informed, resurfaced. Absence of running water was cited as an alibi. Other reasons cited included claustrophobia and men sharing the same toilet with womenfolk.
‘How do you manage then’, I ask. ‘That is actually not a problem’, she deadpans, adding, ‘hardly any student comes to the school’. I am at my wit’s end. She purses her lips and gives a condescending, knowing smile.
There is also a privately run English medium school in the village for the last five years. None of the teachers can speak, read or write in English though. I also discover that all the students of this private school are also enrolled in the Govt School for benefits ranging from midday meal to uniforms. For everyone’s convenience, the private school has the ‘weekly off’ on Mondaysas well–the day the Govt School records the weekly attendance. The other day a girl turned up to registerfor the class X Board Examination next year. The examinees are required to fill up forms 10 months or a year in advance. But she candidly confessed that she did not know how to write or even sign. She would rather put her thumb impression on the form. Her mother, who had accompanied her, argued that if she could withdraw money from a bank with a thumb impression, she saw no earthly reason why her daughter couldn’t sail through the Board exam. The baffled but resigned teacher allowed her to practice copying her name, Geeta Kumari (name changed) before she replicated the exercise on the form.
News Source:
https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/ground-zero-from-muzaffarpur-voters-swachh-bihar-and-education
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