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Students dine dangerously -Shuchismita Chakraborty
-The Telegraph


The students of the government primary school at Rajiv Nagar continued with the practice of having midday meal sitting on railway tracks on Tuesday, punching a hole in the education department's tall claim on strictly monitoring the food scheme after the death of 23 children in Saran.

Seven days after the meal tragedy, the students sat down on the railway line connecting R-Block and Digha in the afternoon to have their meal. Gulping the insipid food, one of the innocent students said they have their meal on the tracks throughout the year, except the rainy days.

"Every day our school authorities serve us food on the railway tracks. We don't find anything wrong in it because we are well acquainted with the timing of the trains. Even if a train comes when we are eating, we can easily run away from the tracks," said Aniket, a Class V student of the government primary school.

Jyoti Kumari, a Class IV student of the school, echoed Aniket. "We sit on the railway tracks only when we eat food. We would leave the tracks if we see any train approaching," she said.

The school starts at 9am and continues up to 3pm. The train on the R-Block-Digha route passes through the tracks adjacent to the school at least twice when the classes are on. It departs for Digha from R-Block at 9.15am. An hour later, it leaves for R-Block from Digha.

A few students like Tarannum Khatun of Class II, are afraid of eating sitting on the tracks. But she is afraid of registering a complaint with the teachers.

"If I register my protest, I might be refused the food. If no other student is protesting, why should I?" the 10-year-old asked.

Tarannum might to be too small to realise the risk of having meals of sitting on the tracks. Equally immature appeared the grown-up teachers.

Ranjana Kumari, one of the teachers of the school, said the institute's authorities had no role in students having meal sitting on the tracks. She told The Telegraph: "Some school children sit on the railway tracks on their own and force others to have their meal there. We don't direct children to sit on the railway tracks. Many times we have told children not to sit on the tracks, but they have not paid heed to our words."

When R. Laxmanan, the director of the midday meal scheme, was apprised of the dangerous practice, he said: "You must be talking about a school running in makeshift arrangement (in huts). On Monday, the chief secretary directed the district magistrates through video conferencing to ensure such schools were shifted to the building of other schools in the vicinity. Till the shifting happens, we would give special attention to these schools."

Now, cut to the government primary school at Indrapuri. The students of this institute are not having the midday meal for the past two months because municipal corporation officials allegedly dump garbage just in front of their school.

"The corporation officials first started dumping garbage in front of our school in 2011. The practice was stopped after students and teachers jointly protested against the act. But the corporation officials again started dumping trash in front of the school from February this year. How can students eat amid the nauseating stench emanating from the garbage?" asked Vithika Devnath, the school principal.

The school principal said she had approached the ward councillor and had written a letter to the district magistrate on July 11 in this connection, but to no avail.

District magistrate N. Sarvana Kumar said: "I have no knowledge about her letter."

Mayor Afzal Imam said: "The corporation officials are not dumping the garbage. Employees of Nidan, an NGO that is supposed to collect garbage from houses, dump trash anywhere. We are thinking about taking some action against the NGO."