Karnataka   

Dalit school lacks basic facilities for its 163 students

Doing without: Children from the school showing off the stick that they use as a bat to play cricket.

MANGALORE/MUNDAJE VILLAGE: The Nidigal Reserve Forest in Beltahngady taluk of Dakshina Kannada district is less than a kilometre away from the 32-acre campus of the Navodaya Model Residential Boys School here.

The 163 Dalit students, who come here from all over the State, do not even have a wall to protect them from the surrounding wilderness.

Started in 1992, the school was placed under the Social Welfare Department instead of the State’s Education Department, to provide special education to Dalit children. Today, the school is in a sorry state.

Over 20 of the 28 students in the tenth grade enthusiastically put their hands up when they are asked how many of them want to pursue a science education. Yet, the school does not have a science laboratory or a science teacher. Incidentally, there are four rooms designated as laboratories. One room is used as a kitchen, one as a storeroom and the other two harbour spiders. U.R. Swami (16), a former student who is now studying at a Pre-University college in Mysore, said that he was finding it hard to cope with lab work in his college. Swami, who was here to collect his original marks card said, “I sometimes feel that I should have studied elsewhere.”

The school has an acute staff shortage. Kannada teacher Umakanth Gowda said that they had to teach classes 6 to 10. “We are B. Ed educated teachers and we are only trained to teach students in classes 8, 9 and 10. There is a special set of skills required to teach younger children and one must have passed the D. Ed for that. For the younger students there are no qualified teachers,” he said. Social Science teacher Aravind Chokkadi described the school as a bus stop. “Most of the teachers here are government job aspirants. They wait till their dream job comes calling and then the children are deserted,” he said.

“All teachers here are hired on contract basis.” The school got nine computers in August last year. Until April 2, 2008, not one was in working condition. Even now the internet connection has not been set up. The school does not even have a proper sports field and children play wherever they can find space. Cricket seems to be the favourite sport with the kids here. They use a stick with a rag wrapped around one end as a bat.

Sports teacher Laxman Tulsu said that he had sent several requisitions but to no avail. As of now the school has a volleyball and a punctured football.

When the issue was brought to the notice of the Taluk Social Welfare officer B.S Rajashekar, he said that the process of correction is already in progress. “Everything will be put right soon,” he said.

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