Students suffer as Kawas fails to get school back

Education is becoming a difficult proposition for the children of Kawas. A year after the devastating floods in the desert region of Barmer, the authorities have failed to construct a new school building in the village.

Education is becoming a difficult proposition for the children of Kawas. A year after the devastating floods in the desert region of Barmer, the authorities have failed to construct a new school building in the village.

Shifting to the outskirts of Kawas due to several pockets in the village still lying submerged, has not helped matters. Those keen to get their lives back on track but aren’t able to include the 1,000-odd children who were studying in the secondary and higher secondary government schools in Kawas. Apart from the children from the village, many young people from the surrounding 11 villages used to study in Kawas.

The school had to be shut down after the floods in August last year. Though the authorities claim that tents were set up for temporary classes and higher classes were temporarily shifted to Madhapura Saini, 7 km away, villagers claim that classes were erratic. “Most of the teachers who were asked to conduct the classes in tents, come from outside and their attendance was never regular. The students have suffered badly. How can one expect them to study when no books are available and teachers are so casual?” complained Devaram, a Kawas resident.

Not surprisingly, the SSC and HSC students from this region have not managed to even scrape through the exams. The number of students who appeared for exams in March was 125 for the SSC and over 150 for HSC. The pass percentage: 4 per cent in SSC and zero in HSC.

“All our books were destroyed by the flood waters. Despite making several representations, the teachers could not provide us with books. We were a group of seven boys sharing just one set,” says Sajod Mali, who failed in the SSC exam.

The villagers are now worried that the current batch will suffer the same fate. Despite the new sessions having begun on Monday, the students continue to be without books and the classes are just as irregular. Moreover, now the residents are also reluctant to shift to New Kawas—where the Rajasthan Government has provided the affected people with one-room houses—because of the lack of even a temporary school there. New Kawas is 30 km away, making commuting difficult for students. As the school records have also been washed away, the authorities are unable to provide students who want to move to other schools with transfer certificates.

“There is some talk of constructing a new school at New Kawas but this will take some time,” said an official.