The early October floods, which devastated 15 districts of North and coastal Karnataka, leaving an unprecedented trail of death and destruction — 226 people dead, 501,398 homes and crops spread over 2.25 million acres valued at Rs.10,000 crore damaged — also wrecked the already frail school education infrastructure of the ravaged districts.
According to the state’s education department which conducted a preliminary survey of government schools in seven most-affected districts — Yadigir, Gulbarga, Raichur, Koppal, Bellary, Bidar and Haveri — an estimated 1,230 schools with an aggregate enrolment of 100,000 students have been “completely affected”, while another 1,096 with 70,000 students were “partially affected”. An education official estimates the cost of rebuilding and renovating school build-ings in these seven districts at Rs.25.5 crore. Moreover with the few government primaries that were spared the devast-ation converted into relief camps, all schooling activity in flood-hit north Karnataka came to a standstill for the region’s 1 million students.
“We plan to approach donors to help children with books and other materials so that schools can be reopened in these areas by October 20. Since schools are serving as rehabilitation centres, we might have to arrange for alternate buildings for schools,” Karnataka educa-tion minister Vishveshwar Hegde Kageri told media personnel on October 13. According to Kageri, block education officers of the 15 flood-affected districts have been asked to collect first-hand information to ascertain the extent of the damage, and prepare action plans to restore school routines.
However it’s not just government schools that have borne the brunt of raging flood waters. Government aided and private schools in north Karnataka too, have lost classrooms and text-books to the rampant waters. The extent of their damage has been estimated by experts at Rs.10 crore.
While the state government’s education department claims to have swung into action to distribute free textbooks and uniforms, and renovate school buildings, it’s well known that weakened by infighting within the ruling BJP, the state is lumbered with a thoroughly dysfunctional administration with a greater reputation for blatant corruption than project implementation. Thus the finer points of dispensing psychological and counseling services — vital ingredients of student rehab — are likely to be beyond the ken of the state education bureaucracy.
“Though the government has shown commendable alacrity in terms of distributing textbooks and other resources to flood-hit children, it’s impossible to expect them to return to school when there has been such grave personal loss. Many have lost their homes, family members and friends. Therefore it’s important to provide counseling services — and help in claiming government compensation to students and teachers — to enable them to cope with personal loss, and restore the will to teach and learn. The government should enlist the help of NGOs to organise counseling in the flood-affected regions,” says Dr. A. S. Seetharamu, former professor at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore and currently education advisor to the Karnataka government.
With administration officials divided on whether the state government is obliged to provide ‘compensation’ or ‘assistance’ to the flood affected, there’s widespread apprehension within the academic community that actual payouts for reconstruction of school buildings will be grudging. “In terms of education facilities and infrastructure, North Karnataka has always been a poor relation of South Karnataka. Therefore the damage to the education infra-structure of the northern districts offers the state government a great opportunity to reconstruct and/or develop schools as the model primaries promised by prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh in his Independence Day (August 15) address to the nation,” says Seetharamu.
But given the chaos, corruption and ineptitude which has already enveloped the state government’s relief efforts, that’s wishful thinking.
Summiya Yasmeen (Bangalore)