SHORT SUPPLY: People going through a board displaying the availability of textbooks at a bookstore in Bangalore on Thursday. — Photo: K. Gopinathan

BANGALORE: Government-approved textbooks for primary classes coming under the State Board, for most classes, are not available easily. Schools reopened in the last week of May, and many students in classes 1 to 10 are still unable to get all the prescribed textbooks.

A survey of bookshops selling school books in many parts of the city revealed that for Class 1 none of the prescribed textbooks are available. Only Kannada textbooks are available for classes 2 and 3. None of the textbooks are available for classes 4 and 5. Only Kannada and Social Studies textbooks are available for Class 6 and only Hindi and Science textbooks available for class 7, and only the Hindi textbooks are in the shops for Class 8.

For Class 9, only Hindi and Science textbooks are easily available. Students in Class 10 are more fortunate. They are only without Social Studies textbook.

Inadequate stock

Owners and sales staff in some of the shops selling schoolbooks said they are yet to get adequate stocks from the publishers, to whom the government had franchised the printing of textbooks. In a shop near Malleswaram Circle, the shopkeeper said: "I ordered 2,000 copies of textbooks for various classes and was supplied only 200 copies. How can I answer the parents who keep flocking? They blame us while it is the Government and publishers who are responsible."

Many schools said there should be no real reason for textbooks not being available because the school syllabus remained unchanged from last year. Bookshops also complained that textbook publishers used to offer a trade discount of 17 per cent till last year, and it had come down to 8 per cent this year. For some books, they had to buy at the cover price and then charge a margin, which many parents objected to. Ritesh, a class 6 student, standing at a bookshop said: "Our monthly tests are due soon and I don't know how I am going to study." A worried parent, Shailaja, said: "The practice of schools supplying textbooks directly to students should come back. Now children get punished for not bringing their textbooks when they are helpless."

Students in government schools appear to be better off. Most of them have already got the textbooks through school authorities. Children in private schools are in worse plight in this case.

The bookshops are none too happy either; if they had enough stocks their business would be healthier.

Sources at the State Directorate of Text Books said there was some delay in the printing of textbooks, but by Saturday most shops will be getting stocks and by early next week no student will be without books.

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