Session starts April 1 : Text books unavailable
Source: Hueiyen News Service / Amukhomba Ngangbam

Imphal, March 30 2011: Just two days left for commencement of this year's academic session of schools, most of the text books prescribed by the Board of Secondary Education Manipur (BSEM) are yet to be readily availabile in book stores.

The academic session of the schools under BSEM will commence from April 1.The number of text books prescribed by the Board for Class-I to X is around 195.The Board is prescribing 74 different text books to the students of Class-I to VIII and 121 for the students of Class-IX and X .

Hueiyen Lanpao conducted a survey on whether the prescribed text books are readily available in the markets.

It was revealed that most of the books were not available and when asked for the reason, store owners said that they have not got the text books even after they demanded from the publishers, that is the BSEM.

Text books like Manipuri Sahitya Lamjing Lairik, Composite Modern English, Mathematics, Hindi, Environmental Studies, Science and Technology, etc.

for the students of Class-I to VIII are not available in the market.

For Mathematics, some copies were available a few days back but it has run out of stock amidst heavy demands.

The only text books now available are for Social Science and Environmental Studies for Class-I to VIII.

According to the book stores, except for 12 text books, other books prescribed by the Board are yet to be released in the market.

As per the prescribed book lists of the Board, out of the 195 text books prescribed by the Board, 90 of them were printed by the Board itself while the responsibility of publishing 105 text books were handed over by the Board to private firms.

With the non availability of text books with only two days before the start of the session, the number of parents and students coming to book stores for the text books are increasing by the day.

At the same time, book stores are apprehensive of depositing money to the Board, through banks, for buying the books as they were not sure of getting the books.

When Hueiyen Lanpao asked about the prevailing chaos, an official of the Board admitted the non-availability of prescribed text books in the market and said that despite their utmost efforts to distribute the books in time they had been unable to meet the deadline.

The official laboured to explain that among other problems confronted by the Board were delays in the submission of samples of text books by private printing firms for review by the Board, changing of new syllabus and the murder of Board's chairman, N Kunjabihari, adding that printing contract was given to 62 private firms this year.

A teacher of a government school in Imphal said the delay drama is not a first time case.

Every year, such inconveniences are faced.

He also said, even though, the academic session in government schools is yet to start, most of the private schools have already started the session.

He is in a dark as to how students are to be taught without text books.

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