(Rajasthan) A highway protest that clicked Total teachers: 5,60,412 Pupil-teacher ratio: 20 Student-classroom ratio: 21 Avg teachers per school: 5.1 As two boys bend over a generator, Dhanraj Nagar, principal of the Government Senior Secondary School in Pipalda, impatiently paces around the dark room. It’s 30 minutes into Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s televised Teachers’ Day address and there is no sign of electricity being restored or the generator coming to life. Things had been running smooth till about half an hour ago. The school had borrowed a television and set-top box from an adjoining house and even the generator had been checked the previous day. But minutes before the PM’s speech, it all fell apart. Nagar made repeated calls to the executive engineer in the power department, but to no avail and now, the generator isn’t responding. At 10.30 am, electricity is restored and Nagar and the other teachers swiftly assemble the children in the open playground, facing the TV that’s precariously perched on the boundary wall. “A doctor conducts a surgery and newspaper writes about him the next day, but a teacher produces 10 such doctors but no story is written on him,” says the PM as his audience nods in agreement. Students and teachers of this school, 60 km from the coaching hub of Kota, would know that better than anyone else. (Click here to read more) (Bihar) ‘I have to shout to be heard. It has become a habit’ Total teachers: 3,61,466 Pupil-teacher ratio: 51 Student-classroom ratio: 57 Avg teachers per school: 5.5 For close to two hours, Mohammed Jasimuddin paces — up and down the room, between benches, in the aisle between desks. “That’s the only way I can be heard in a class of 85,” says Mohammed Jasimuddin, 34, a contract teacher of social studies at the Rajkiyakrita Madhya Vidyalaya at the sub-division town of Tarapur in Bihar’s Munger district. All this while, Jasimuddin reads out from the Class VIII history textbook, the page open to the chapter ‘Angrezi shasan aur shahri badlav (British rule and urban change)’. There is a muffled drone in the background as students, five squeezed into each bench, struggle to keep up with the teacher, their textbooks overlapping each other’s. (Click here to read more) (Madhya Pradesh) Two teachers, 11 students and many empty benches Total teachers: 4,64,018 Pupil-teacher ratio: 29 Student-classroom ratio: 24 Avg teachers per school: 3.5 The strength of the government middle school in Sehore, less than 100 km from Bhopal, is 11. Plus 1 — the land owner’s dog. He is the most regular in school, ambling in and out of the three class rooms, curling up on the floor and snoozing near the teacher’s desk, at times, all perky with his eyes pointed in attention. On a Thursday morning, he lies on the floor near the desk of Ramnivas Kushwah, the atithi (guest) teacher who is waiting for students to arrive. On the blackboard behind Kushwah is a diagram of the animal cell, with cytoplasm, ribosomes and other labels. Kushwah says he drew it the day before, “copied from my guidebook”, when he had just one student in his classroom. Today, he will simply change the date next to the diagram. (Click here to read more) (Maharashtra) After suicide bid on I-Day, a new math teacher to die for Total teachers: 6,32,595 Pupil-teacher ratio: 25 Student-classroom ratio: 32 Avg teachers per school: 6.7 Namdev Polawad joined duty in exceptional circumstances. Just a day earlier, four Class XII students of the Vitthalrao Jadhav Arts and Science Junior College, a residential school in Dampur, a remote village in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district, had tried to kill themselves, ostensibly to press their demand for a mathematics teacher. The high drama that followed forced the school to rush with appointment of Polawad as the new math teacher. On August 15, after the singing of the national anthem, the four Class XII students had taken a swig of what seemed like poison, tossed the bottles aside and jumped off the stage. The boys were rushed to a nearby hospital and soon declared out of danger. Notes recovered from the students said they were killing themselves because the school hadn’t appointed a math teacher and without one, their future was bleak. (Click here to read more) (Odisha) In Maoist heartland, a school that braves the odds Total teachers: 2,72,173 Pupil-teacher ratio: 22 Student-classroom ratio: 27 Avg teachers per school: 4.2 On a Thursday evening, 90 students of Badapada residential high school in Malkangiri district stand around as mathematics teacher Ramesh Chandra Sahu and physical education teacher Suresh Chandra Patel try to install a 40-inch LED television on the wall of one of the rooms. Every nail that Sahu tries to hammer in bends and he gives up after trying for half an hour. Sahu then tries some humour to beat the frustration. “Maybe the TV is refusing to be installed as there is no power. What’s the point having a TV set when there is no electricity,” says Patel as the students guffaw and disperse. “For the last 10 days, there has been no power. A huge spark burnt one of the power lines near the school. We have informed officials in Malkangiri, but no one knows when the lines will be repaired,” says Sahu, one of the five teachers at the high school. (Click here to read more)
