Andhra Pradesh

Is it the lull before the storm?

Monsoons are surely playing hide and seek with Hyderabadis. While weather officials have declared the onset of monsoon in most parts of the State including the State capital, the recent lack of rains has rattled many.

The black clouds amalgamate and hover teasingly over the skies, but invariably the evening goes without a good spell of rain.

As if adding insult to injury, the daylong hot sun is making matters even worse. It’s as if Hyderabadis are facing an extended summer since a few days. The heartening news is that traditionally rains continue to lash twin cities till late September and sometimes even till October.

Is this the quiet before the impending storm?

Government schools are in news again. Not for academic excellence but for their academic clubbing. The move has stirred a hornets nest bringing the teachers more than the taught on the streets. For good measure politicians too have jumped on the bandwagon. While the avowed reason for merger of schools is to pool their limited resources for optimum benefit of students but in reality it is having the opposite effect. The sudden shifting of schools has slowed down the admissi on process since parents are in two minds about sending their wards to a far off school. Interestingly, a back to school programme is also on. Wouldn’t the merger decision render this programme ineffective?

The rationalisation exercise performed by the district administration together with the implementation of G.O. 76 created quite a commotion in the city during the past week. Teachers’ unions and associations took up cudgels for the students—at least ostensibly so—while students stopped attending the new schools on their teachers’ behest.

What one should take note is the fact that city schools are on a different plane when compared with their rural counterparts. While shifting of schools will not cause much of a problem in districts if both the schools are situated within the same village or town, the same in a city will have to face many protests.

After all, which parent will dare to allow their children travel so far in the city traffic? That too when literacy awareness is so low that sending children to schools is considered by many as a favour done to the government!

M. SAI GOPAL, J.S. IFTHEKHAR & SWATHI . V

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