Graft in conflict zone

Red zone schools teach how to mint money

Show Ways Of Fudging Attendance To Swindle Govt Funds

Supriya Sharma TNN

Dantewada (Chhattisgarh): ‘Phoolon se nit hasna seekho, bhawaron se nit gaana ... Learn to smile from the flowers, and sing from the bees).’ The cheerful lines of a popular Hindi rhyme are seen on a bright wall poster inside the bleak confines of a village school in Dantewada. But the lines are wasted. There is not a soul in sight, except a thin wiry man who introduces himself as Roshan Kumar Kharashu, shikshakarmi, grade 2, the teacher in charge of Gufadi primary school. “This is mahua season. The children are skipping school to help their parents pick flowers,” Kharushu says. But a look at the attendance register shows all of them are marked present. Kharashu squirms, and moments later, like a child who has thought up an answer, says, “What can I do if people dont send their children to school? If I stop marking them present, they will close down the school and I will lose my job.”

You want to believe the man. He is just 27, and must have been really desperate for a job inDantewada, leaving behind the safety of his village, in the plains of Durg, close to Raipur. But then facts do not support him. No school was closed down in Dantewada. Even when violence rocked the place, and the civil administration withdrew from many interior places, 264 village schools did not close but shifted, close to the highways. The displacement has led to permanent upheaval in the lives of children, forcing them to travel long distances. But it has only made it easier for the education bureaucracy to make money. Narayanaswamy, an activist with the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, who has lived in Dantewada for five years, says the uprooting of schools from their original locations has made school wardens less accountable. “There’s a constant flux of children, who drop in and out of school, but the funds remain steady,” he says.

Every child is entitled to Rs 450 to Rs 950 as stipend, apart from books, uniforms, and three meals a day. No wonder there is an incentive to mark those absent as present. Even imaginative rules meant to ease the school crisis have only aided corruption. For instance, officials at the block level were empowered to sanction new schools and appoint teachers if enough children lacked access to an existing one.

In Manjhipara, last October, six men gather 228 children from interior villages that had no schools, or at least they claim they did. All were appointed as teachers, one was made warden, and the group was assigned a building to operate as a residential school. In March, when this correspondent visited the school, not more than 100 kids were present. Warden Man Singh Nayak conceded not more than 140 kids had attended classes that month. “They run away in the middle of the night,” he said. Why don’t they go looking for them? “It’s not safe to go to those villages,” says Roshan Yadav, a teacher. But what changed in just six months? Had they not gone to the same villages in October to bring the kids to school? There was no answer for this, or the more basic question: why were all 228 children still on the rolls?
(The series is concluded)

PLAYING WITH THEIR FATE