School bags crushed government’s efficacy under their weight

Srinagar: Many months and two committees later, the state government is yet to make a move towards reducing the weight of school bags.
After receiving the report from the first committee in March, the government sent a team of officials to Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan for studying their models of “Human resources and School Management Committees”.
While the team submitted its report within a week after it returned from these states, no formal order has come from the government yet over addressing the issue.
Joint Secretary (Publication), JKBOSE, Mohammad Arif Akhoon, who was the member of the study group, said they travelled to various schools of the coastal areas in Tamil Nadu to study the local government’s school management process.
“We went to Tamil Nadu and then to Pondicherry to get an idea about working of the schools there and the academic course developed by them for various classes,” he said.
Akhoon said they submitted the report to the department within a week of their return in March.
Secretary Education, Farooq A Shah, said that they have been consulting various other stakeholders to devise a course of action.
“It is a difficult task and we are currently analysing the reports submitted by the experts. Besides, various stakeholders are being consulted for their viewpoint. We have to keep the interest of students in consideration,” he said.
Following Jammu and Kashmir High Court’s order on a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) submitted by a law student , the government constituted a committee of five members in August last year to suggest the measures for limiting the numbers of books in students’ bags.
The Committee submitted its report in the month of November last year after which the High court directed the government to take a decision on the issue before February 2018.
Professor A G Madhosh, one of the members from erstwhile committee, earlier told The Kashmir Monitor that he too was unaware about the status of the report filed by them.
Petitioner Badrul Dujja said that the reports by expert committee should also be made public.
“Expert committee’s report didn’t come in public, so that we can debate on it. What bothers me is that our state is not able to solve a basic issue like this. I doubt how we will solve other major issues in the Education Department,” he said.