Back to Bangalore

Though it has been a couple of days since I reached Bangalore I have not blogged so far. I am sure the readers are not going to believe if I say that I have actually been busy, so I am not going to try hard to be convincing. I was very curious about how the Chandranagar school was doing (for those who don't have a context please read Rajni's report) and so landed up in the school the very same day I reached here. I got to talk to Ms. Padmaja (the HM) and few other teachers. Before I left Bangalore I had uploaded the report to the computer that is there in the school and I had requested all the teachers to go through it and be prepared with action point which we could discuss when I get back. Only 3 of them had done so which was a bit disappointing but not surprising. So we had to postpone the meeting till Nov 6th and this time the HM was going to send a written memo to all teachers to be prepared for the meeting. Otherwise everything seemed to be ok, or at least that is what Ms. Padmaja said but I could quite clearly see that she was not very comfortable. I probed a bit and then gave up when she continued to maintain that everything was ok. She did mention thought that she had avoided any direct conversation with Mr. Manjunath, the errant teacher.
The next day I get a phone call from Mr. Sidde Gowda and Mr. Mounesh, who are Asha appointed teachers. They said they are leaving for their villages (near Shimoga) for the Deepavali habba but are not going to come back to the school after that! They thanked for the opportunity Asha had provided. I had to go "wait, wait, wait ... tell me what happened". According to them there was some altercation between Mounesh and Manjunath and Manjunath hit Mounesh and abused him very badly. Mounesh said that he can't handle this anymore and they would rather go back to their villages. In any case both are trained teachers and are expecting appointment orders from the Government which is going on a teachers recruitment drive. I had told them that I would go to the school and talk to Ms Padmaja and Ms Gowramma (the SDMC president).
Before going to the school I had talked to Ms Padmaja and also to a couple of other Asha Bangalore volunteers about what could be the next course of action. There was no doubt that Manjunath had to go, but how is that going to be achieved with out Ms Gowramma support (Manjunath is her nephew). Padmaja felt that it was best that all Asha appointed teachers are relieved from their duties.
With trepidation I went to the school again on Saturday (October 21) and had a meeting with Gowramma. She had an entirely different version saying it was Sidde Gowda and Mounesh who were baiting Manjunath. This has happened earlier too, I get two different versions and even though I know where my sympathies lie there is no concrete evidence to prove one party is wrong. So I had to tread carefully and mentioned that this kind of goings-on were not conducive to a school environment. So I broached the subject of relieving the Asha appointed 'volunteer' teachers and instead press the education bureaucracy to appoint the necessary number of teachers. To my surprise Gowramma was very enthusiastic about this approach. She now mentioned that there was mistakes on both sides (a concession I guess) and it is best that we get out of the wholly by removing all the 3 teachers. But the school has around 280 students and the government has appointed only 4 teachers which is clearly insufficient. The government ration is 40:1 (which according to me is quite high for a primary school, it should be 30:1). So the school needs at least 3 more teachers. Since I am 'retired' now, I offered Gowramma that we can both go and meet the BEO and request him to appoint the additional teachers. Before that I wanted to make sure that the entire SDMC members concur to our approach. Gowramma is the only person in the SDMC who is active in delivering her duties as SDMC and others have been quite delinquent. Of course they have very busy (daily wage earners) but there is no other way but to participate more in the school management to make it deliver. Asha has very little stake in the school and can act only as a catalyst or enabler. The main effort should come from the direct stake holders who are represented by the SDMC. Gowramma has now promised that she would organize an SDMC meeting where we would discuss these things. She would then write a letter and collect signatures from the all the parents to request the government to appoint the adequate number of teachers for the school. So November is going to be an interesting month. Let us see what happens. Would the government really respond positively and deliver what it ought to deliver? We will see that after the "break". (Advertisers, please flock to me. There are a million readers who are eagerly waiting, holding their breath, to see what happens).