Education Minister Taba Tedir while responding to a question raised during in Assembly on Monday has informed that all the schools currently functioning in state without any students’ enrolment will be shut down. As a part of the overall educational reforms which Arunachal Pradesh needs badly, especially that relating to school education, it will draw little opposition, since, logically there is no point in deploying and locking resources in efforts that, at the end of the day, result in no output. It has also been announced that the surplus teaching manpower arising out of this streamlining exercise will be deployed in the those schools suffering from scarcity of teachers. It will be most heartening if it is done judiciously as school education in the state needs a continued attention and along with addition of year-to-year financial resources to build new infrastructural settings, maximum care of the existing ones is also equally necessary.
The figures available are alarming indeed since it’s not a handful, but a solid number of 311 schools which are actually existing just on paper with no educational activity going on. If this is worrisome, the causes that led to this must not be overlooked and the policy makers are also well accustomed with them. Migration of families from remote areas who once upon a time use to send their wards to these schools had to seek for ‘greener pastures’ for survival closer to the district headquarters. If this has got veracity without any doubt, can it be discounted either that lack of minimum basic infrastructure in these schools had also been a great contributor. The rot had not taken place all of a sudden and it will be no over-telling that it has been built over the decades. It is a fact that ‘remoteness’, in India, is a curse for the people living those far-off places and they are the hardest hit when speaking about the macro-level topic of ‘unequal distribution of development’. Arunachal Pradesh is perhaps a glaring example of this phenomenon and as unavoidable consequences, its remote pockets remain unattended and continue to suffer. Ample reflections of this ‘forced underdevelopment’ can be cited and the shabby state of the schools there is just an example.
The coming state budget will also presumably contain many new announcements for the school education sector. But allocation of enhanced financial resources will fail to attain its objectives if there is no proper utilisation under a watchful monitoring mechanism. This is what the state is suffering since years and time has come to rectify this.
The administrative apparatus must be geared up to meet this challenge which must be a long-term assignment. Without this, the state can except more such schools going defunct. 

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Kenter Joya Riba

(Managing Editor)
      She is a graduate in Science with post graduation in Sociology from University of Pune. She has been in the media industry for nearly a decade. Before turning to print business, she has been associated with radio and television.
Email: kenterjoyaz@easternsentinel.in / editoreasternsentinel@gmail.com
Phone: 0360-2212313

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