Notes from the blackboard: ‘I have to shout to be heard. It has become a habit’

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.

It’s 10 on a Wednesday morning and 85 students of Class VIII — of the 172 on the rolls — have come together in a 20×50 ft room. These students are from two sections and like on most days, it’s a combined class because the school (with classes from I to VIII) has only 10 teachers for 665 students. But not all the teachers are free to teach — on any given day, someone is engaged in the monitoring of the midday meal scheme while three-four teachers double as booth-level officers, with mandatory additional work such as election and census duties.

Jasimuddin is one of them. He gets Rs 5,000 a year for these additional duties, besides the Rs 11,000 a month he earns as a contract teacher. Jasimuddin shows a message on his cellphone that says he needs to be present at a meeting of booth-level officers at 12.

That gives him less than two hours to finish his class. Jasimuddin first takes the roll call from two registers and then begins the chapter, loudly reading out paragraphs. “I have to shout to be heard. It’s become a habit. My family complains I am too loud at home too,” he says later.

The scene at the Tarapur school is similar to that in most Bihar schools. According to statistics of the District Information System for Education (DISE) for 2013-14, Bihar has the highest student-classroom ratio in the country at 57, far above the national average of 28.

An hour later, Jasimuddin asks students to submit their previous day’s homework. “I can’t check all their work. If I did that, I wouldn’t be able to complete the syllabus. So I check 20-30 books in a day,” he says as students stand in a line, waiting for Jasimuddin to check their answers on the ‘Renaissance’ chapter.

That done, Jasimuddin goes back to reading from the day’s chapter. Some students take notes, others simply listen to him, their eyes following him as he takes rounds of the class. “So what is difference between a village and a town?” asks Jasimuddin. Some hands go up and Jasimuddin smiles at the correct answers.

It’s now close to noon, time for Jasimuddin to leave. Principal Mukesh Kumar Singh takes charge. “I have no spare teacher for the next class,” he says, adding teachers should be left to teach. “Yahan to sirf bhat-dal ka hisab jodte rehte hain (here they are busy with the maths of rice and pulse),” he says, referring to the mid-day meal and other duties that keep teachers busy.