Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Amateur Snapshot...

“Rule of Ducks” over the road at Kurnool District, Andhra Pradesh

- Pic by Ashok Agarwal, 24.12.2008

Saturday, December 20, 2008

MCD PRIMARY SCHOOL NEGLECTS MUSLIM STUDENTS

Justice Rajender Sachar Committee Report on Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India (November 2006) says that as many as 25 percent of Muslim children in the 6-14 year age group have either never attended school or have dropped out. Following the recommendations of this Committee, the Government of India came up with an ambitious plan of action to improve the lot of the Muslim community. However, such plan has remained elusive so far.

MCD Primary School, IInd Shift, Main Road, Zafrabad, Delhi-53 is an Urdu Medium School having an enrolment of around 800 underprivileged Muslim students in Classes I to V. There are eight regular primary teachers plus six contract primary teachers plus one Principal, namely Shri Sirajuddin (M-9211534490) in this school. The students from the beginning of the academic year i.e. April 2008 were totally deprived of the benefit of all these eight regular primary teachers since these teachers were deployed to other non teaching work by the Government. These teachers were exclusively deployed for child census work in the month of April. May-June was school holidays. From July to November, they were deployed for Delhi Election work and from 30.11.2008 they have been deployed on election duty in Jammu and Kashmir and nobody knows when these teachers would return to school to teach the students.

In such horrible conditions, how we can expect these students to receive good quality education so to compete with their counterparts studying in fee charging private schools. It is a hard reality that the system is so designed by the rulers that the students belonging to the underprivileged sections are bound to be arbitrarily and unjustly discriminated and deprived of their basic educational rights. The Social Justice philosophy of our Constitution has been breached as a rule and followed in practice in exception.

Ashok Agarwal, Advocate
Advisor, Social Jurist
M-09811101923
19.12.2008