The Bihar Police have a strange albeit interesting task at hand. The state government has entrusted them with the task of getting as many children as possible to school. Their job includes counselling and convincing parents about the pluses of sending their wards to school, but minus the use of force — the police is otherwise so infamous for. This measure is CM Nitish Kumar’s brainchild, who wants “sushashan” or good governance in every sphere of the state. Kumar feels this will work towards improving the image of the police in the eyes of the common man. In fact, the success of the programme can be gauged from the fact that this month-old project has already begun yielding results. The police have already enrolled over 20,000 students in government primary schools. A big achievement for a state where an estimated 14 lakh children between 6 to 14 years never go to school. The charter of duty of the police now includes visiting houses under their jurisdiction, counselling, coaxing and convincing the economically weak to send their wards to school. Once they agree in principle, the police get the children enrolled in school. Echoing the excitement of the Bihar police, Additional Director General of Police, Abhyanand said, “We have taken it up as a challenge and over and above that it gives us an opportunity to do something more than routine tasks.” The idea appears innovative and the response is also positive but the bigger challenge is ensuring that these children don’t drop out. Even Abhyanand accepts these facts. “Yes. The bigger challenge is seeing that children and their parents don’t abandon the idea of going to school. But presently we are concentrating on getting them all to schools, we’ll cross the bridge when we come to it.” The fears are understandable since the drop out rate at the primary level in this state is as high 57.27 percent against the national average of 40.25. The state government doesn’t deny that extreme poverty forces parents to withdraw their children from school and take their help in augmenting the family income. But the silver lining here is that the present regime is making sincere efforts to improve the dismal literacy rate. Human Resource Development Minister Brishen Patel said, “We have already taken a few measures to improve the illiteracy rate of 52.47 percent. This year, we have allocated the maximum funds for elementary education. We are also working towards seeing that children once enrolled do not lose steam midway.” Inspite of the feel-good factor surrounding the project, most fear the project would meet a sorry fate once the initial enthusiasm was over. “It’s difficult to visualise how a populist idea can be sustained in a state that faces an acute shortage of police manpower. Law and order is a bigger problem here,” said a police officer on conditions of anonymity.
