School text books fiasco continues : Reducing education to a joke
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: February 29, 2012 -

It cannot get more farcical than this. For the last ten years or so, the failure to make text books prescribed by the Board of Secondary Education, Manipur available to the students on time has been an issue and the script has not changed this year too.

It is a sharp reflection of where education figures on the priority list of the policy framers of the land and there is nothing amusing about this.

As things stand today, students (Class 1 to VIII) studying in Government schools are yet to fully receive the free text books to be given to them under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the key word here is free especially when viewed against the report that an FIR has been lodged with Thoubal district police in connection with a case wherein the books supposed to be supplied to the students were found sold in a bookstore.

Freebies attract the corrupt and the unscrupulous and books meant to be delivered free of cost finding its way to a book store indicates the existence of a nexus between some elements and this nexus may be seen as an extension of the farce of the exercise to make the books available to the students on time.

In all probability this case is but just the tip of the proverbial iceberg and while it was an iceberg that sank the mighty Titanic decades back, here it has already sunk the future of thousands of students. This is the reality.

The only proactive action that the people has seen with regard to this annual farce was sometime in 2002/2003 when members of the State Legislative Assembly conducted a spot survey of all the book stores in Imphal to verify whether the text books prescribed by the BSEM are available or not.

Fast forward ten years or so and the same script continues, in a way reducing the spot survey exercise to nothing much more than playing to the gallery to score some brownie points.

This is not how education should be handled. Primary education, primary health care, road connectivity, power supply and water supply are fundamentals of a dignified existence, but this has obviously blown over the heads of the powers that be.

Why is it that local printing firms have not been able to deliver the goods on time each successive year ? That the BSEM has not addressed this question with the merit it deserves is clear, or else Manipur would not have witnessed this case year after year.

Juxtapose this abject failure to deliver the books on time and the dot on time delivery performance by an Assam based printing firm and a story emerges. The joke of a power supply is one factor, a major one at that, but this cannot continue to be an excuse for a decade !

This is where questions ought and should be raised over the very process of awarding the printing rights to the firms. What are the parameters to decide which printing firms should be awarded the work ? Is there anything called past records ?

Another interesting point to note is the fact that text books from reputed companies like Mcmillan and Oxford are a thing of the past. Why have they decided to stay away from the bidding process ?

Local firms, no doubt, should be encouraged and promoted, but a line needs to be drawn. If the availability of school text books is going to be an annual issue, especially at the time of a new academic year, then it is time to clean the rot and the lethargy within the BSEM.

The joke has gone on for too long.

Apart from this why should young students be made to suffer every year because of the sheer apathy of some officials who just refuse to see anything beyond their immediate ‘interest’ ?

If the task of making the text books available to the students on time is too cumbersome then it is time for a rethink on entrusting the job to the BSEM.

Sheer apathy amounting to criminal negligence is what it is for it is nothing less than violating the rights guaranteed under the Right to Education Act