Bring yourself back to the time when you were just seven years old.
Imagine yourself in the classroom, sitting down on the cold hard floor with a book in your hands. You are trying to read the words, but it is hard to see. There isn’t enough light coming in from the window.
You look around, trying to find another source of light. When you look up at the ceiling, a glimmer of hope emerges, as there it is, what you have been looking for – a light bulb.
Eagerly, you stand up and search for the switch. Locating it at the corner of the room, you delightfully try to turn on the lights. But no matter how many times you flick that switch, darkness still surrounds you.
Disappointed, you head back to the cold floor and take your place. With the book in your lap, the only thing you can do now is to squint your eyes as hard as you can.
As you look around, you find slight comfort in knowing that you are not alone, as all the other children in the room are doing exactly the same thing.
But luckily for most of us, we enjoyed the privilege of having lighting and furniture in our classrooms.
Maybe we even took them for granted.
However, this is not the case of the children in Mewat. Lights cannot be turned on, because there is no electricity. Even though the government funds the schools’ electricity, power distribution in the rural area can be unreliable.
In the school campus in Salamba village, some classrooms were lucky enough to have lights installed. However, the village receives only 8 hours of electricity per day as determined by the electrical company, and the school cannot adjust these timings to suit their hours. In other schools, classrooms do not even have lights installed. The only solution for them is to study outside in the corridors; be it during summer, winter, and even the monsoon season.
If the lack of proper lighting isn’t bad enough, these children have no tables and chairs to sit on, either. There isn’t enough to go around for everyone. Furniture, if any, is mostly unusable due to wear and tear. Schools would love to start repairing their broken furniture, but have been unable to do so due to lack of resources.
Ref: http://srffoundation.wordpress.com/
It is a pity that there are many educational institutes like this in the country. How will the 'light of knowledge' reach our children without light? One reason why our people are backward and resignedly accept their fate is because of lack of education. Urgent steps are required to be taken to overcome this. Primary Health and Education are two areas where a major part of nation's resources should be directed. Without these we can never hope to become a great nation. Only problem that I see is that though the politicians pay lip service to these subjects, they don't want people to be well and educated; because, then the people will be more aware and will not be swayed to vote for them. So, I think, we the people have to take these on and constantly coax the politicians to spare resources.
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