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Remember Aakriti?
ON 19 November 2007, the government had
set up the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR)
as a statutory body which would be authorised to summon and enforce the
attendance of any person from any part of India and examine them on
oath. Under the Commissions for Protection of Child Rights Act, 2005,
the National Commission would have all the powers of the civil court
while inquiring into matters under the Civil Procedure Code (CPC).
The National Commission, while inquiring into a matter, could warrant any document and receive evidence on affidavits from authorities concerned. It could also requisition any public record or copy thereof from any court of office. Apart from having the power to forward a case to a magistrate, the commission is also authorised to issue commissions for the examination of witnesses. What has been the efficacy of this commission?
The incident forced authorities to order an internal inquiry into the alleged death due to negligence. Trouble began when the parents along with fellow students of the 17-year-old victim Aakriti Bhatia, disrupted a press conference organised by authorities of Modern School, to clarify the stand of the institution on the issue.
It was reported that Aakriti Bhatia (17), a student of Class XII, Modern School, died on her way to the hospital. She had complained of breathlessness to her teacher around 10am, but she was not taken to hospital till 10:40am. Instead of calling for an ambulance or making arrangements for taking her to hospital, the principal waited for Aakriti's family to send their car.
This shows the callousness of Goldie Malhotra, principal of the school. Aakriti’s friends said that when she first complained of discomfort, the principal did not take the matter seriously and later the nurse said she couldn't come over to take a look at Aakriti. One of the close friends of the dead girl said the nurse refused to come down and asked her to come up instead, explaining, "Later, when her condition deteriorated, we forced her (the nurse) to come down. No one in the school was concerned.” This is a typical case of death of a teenager due to rash negligence of school authorities.
But this is neither the first nor the only case of a premature end to a promising life due to the negligence of school authorities. On 18 April, CNN-IBN had reported the death of an 11-year-old student, Shanno Khan, allegedly due to corporal punishment. She was a second grade student of a municipal corporation school in Delhi. She was allegedly beaten by her school teacher on Wednesday, 15 April. The teacher Manju had reportedly banged the child’s head against a table before making her stand in the sun for over two hours.
It's a sorry state of affairs that, rather than ascertaining how successful the schools had been in playing the ideal role as temples of learning, aided by gurus who remove ignorance with knowledge; we have been forced to discuss whether our children are safe when in the custody of their teachers. In the name of discipline, the teachers of this era harass students.
Discipline should be a self-imbibed value and not imposed by others. In my own school days, I was at times punished or I saw students being punished because we had soiled the floors with muddy shoes or because we had not clipped our nails or we were late to school or because homework was not done or even simply because we did not perform some exercise the way we were supposed to. The punishment varied from heavy beating on the hands and legs, to making us stand in the sun, making us clean the whole school, running many rounds of our school ground.
It is not that students were right in not doing things properly, but as children we were too innocent and did not understand why we were being treated harshly. We neither understood discipline nor needed it. All we needed was love and care and someone to explain us everything. But all we got was atrocious treatment. These punishments did not make us disciplined; it created a fear psychosis in us. One of my classmates would be constantly treated so badly and taunted repeatedly for years because of a single mistake he had once committed. If today he keeps the wrong company, the whole blame lies with our teachers.
It’s time to take strict action against school authorities for negligence and harassment of students in the name of discipline. It should be pointed out here that often teachers who expect students to follow certain rules and discipline, are themselves not practicing them. That is, they fail to lead by example.
The then union minister for child and women development, Renuka Chaudhary, had gotten away, paying a token visit to the house of the dead girl who was better off even as she blissfully forgot to be equally courteous to the family of the poorer girl, Shanno. And to her, the setting up of the NCPCR in itself was a great achievement of her government in this regard.
If the commission itself was an achievement, why did it take more than
a month since young Aakriti's death for the Delhi government’s
directorate of education to direct the Vasant Vihar branch of Modern
School to suspend its nurse and discipline in-charge. For Aakriti's
family, all this may be too little, too late.
For the rest of us, the vigil must not end. It is true that the DoE had already sent an advisory to all recognised schools to appoint a full-time or part-time medical officer as per their requirements. Moreover, the government of Delhi issued guidelines pertaining to medical facilities to all aided and unaided schools in the city to deal with any emergency. The guidelines were being prepared in consultation with the health department and were to be issued "in a couple of days' time" as per Delhi's education minister Arvinder Singh Lovely (as of 22 May).
Strangely, the media has not done a follow-up on the Aakriti case -- neither the newspapers, nor the television news channels, nor the public at large. At the moment, ‘racist’ Australia is where the news is! This notorious short memory of the candlelight-protest generation will prove to be society's bane some day.
The National Commission, while inquiring into a matter, could warrant any document and receive evidence on affidavits from authorities concerned. It could also requisition any public record or copy thereof from any court of office. Apart from having the power to forward a case to a magistrate, the commission is also authorised to issue commissions for the examination of witnesses. What has been the efficacy of this commission?
The incident forced authorities to order an internal inquiry into the alleged death due to negligence. Trouble began when the parents along with fellow students of the 17-year-old victim Aakriti Bhatia, disrupted a press conference organised by authorities of Modern School, to clarify the stand of the institution on the issue.
It was reported that Aakriti Bhatia (17), a student of Class XII, Modern School, died on her way to the hospital. She had complained of breathlessness to her teacher around 10am, but she was not taken to hospital till 10:40am. Instead of calling for an ambulance or making arrangements for taking her to hospital, the principal waited for Aakriti's family to send their car.
This shows the callousness of Goldie Malhotra, principal of the school. Aakriti’s friends said that when she first complained of discomfort, the principal did not take the matter seriously and later the nurse said she couldn't come over to take a look at Aakriti. One of the close friends of the dead girl said the nurse refused to come down and asked her to come up instead, explaining, "Later, when her condition deteriorated, we forced her (the nurse) to come down. No one in the school was concerned.” This is a typical case of death of a teenager due to rash negligence of school authorities.
But this is neither the first nor the only case of a premature end to a promising life due to the negligence of school authorities. On 18 April, CNN-IBN had reported the death of an 11-year-old student, Shanno Khan, allegedly due to corporal punishment. She was a second grade student of a municipal corporation school in Delhi. She was allegedly beaten by her school teacher on Wednesday, 15 April. The teacher Manju had reportedly banged the child’s head against a table before making her stand in the sun for over two hours.
It's a sorry state of affairs that, rather than ascertaining how successful the schools had been in playing the ideal role as temples of learning, aided by gurus who remove ignorance with knowledge; we have been forced to discuss whether our children are safe when in the custody of their teachers. In the name of discipline, the teachers of this era harass students.
Discipline should be a self-imbibed value and not imposed by others. In my own school days, I was at times punished or I saw students being punished because we had soiled the floors with muddy shoes or because we had not clipped our nails or we were late to school or because homework was not done or even simply because we did not perform some exercise the way we were supposed to. The punishment varied from heavy beating on the hands and legs, to making us stand in the sun, making us clean the whole school, running many rounds of our school ground.
It is not that students were right in not doing things properly, but as children we were too innocent and did not understand why we were being treated harshly. We neither understood discipline nor needed it. All we needed was love and care and someone to explain us everything. But all we got was atrocious treatment. These punishments did not make us disciplined; it created a fear psychosis in us. One of my classmates would be constantly treated so badly and taunted repeatedly for years because of a single mistake he had once committed. If today he keeps the wrong company, the whole blame lies with our teachers.
It’s time to take strict action against school authorities for negligence and harassment of students in the name of discipline. It should be pointed out here that often teachers who expect students to follow certain rules and discipline, are themselves not practicing them. That is, they fail to lead by example.
The then union minister for child and women development, Renuka Chaudhary, had gotten away, paying a token visit to the house of the dead girl who was better off even as she blissfully forgot to be equally courteous to the family of the poorer girl, Shanno. And to her, the setting up of the NCPCR in itself was a great achievement of her government in this regard.
For the rest of us, the vigil must not end. It is true that the DoE had already sent an advisory to all recognised schools to appoint a full-time or part-time medical officer as per their requirements. Moreover, the government of Delhi issued guidelines pertaining to medical facilities to all aided and unaided schools in the city to deal with any emergency. The guidelines were being prepared in consultation with the health department and were to be issued "in a couple of days' time" as per Delhi's education minister Arvinder Singh Lovely (as of 22 May).
Strangely, the media has not done a follow-up on the Aakriti case -- neither the newspapers, nor the television news channels, nor the public at large. At the moment, ‘racist’ Australia is where the news is! This notorious short memory of the candlelight-protest generation will prove to be society's bane some day.
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