Introduction
The News Pinch footage from Prathmik Vidyalaya Belikot—a buffalo (“bhains”) grazing on the compound, passersby mistaking the site for a stable (“tabele”), classrooms rendered unusable by erosion (“chauch se kataaya” / “katār”), instruction suspended for over a month, and the headmaster’s prolonged absence—is not merely an outraging image. It is a concise, visceral demonstration of how policy promises fracture at the moment of implementation and how children pay the price. The scene captures immediate harms (interrupted teaching, halted mid-day meals) and points to deeper, layered institutional failures: inadequate hazard assessment, slow or absent damage-declaration, breakdown of accountability, and an absence of timely remedial mechanisms. The empirical scale of the problem matters: India’s school system currently serves roughly 24.8 crore children across about 14.7 lakh schools, so local failures like Belikot are not statistically negligible—they multiply into national learning and equity losses. Press Information Bureau+1
Immediate harms: learning, nutrition and the protection that schools provide
A functioning primary school does three things at once: it provides instruction, a predictable daily routine that anchors families, and nutritional support through the PM-POSHAN (mid-day meal) programme. When a school becomes physically unusable and staff abscond, all three functions collapse simultaneously. Children lose structured contact hours at a critical age for foundational learning; they lose the mid-day meal that supports attendance and nutrition; and the community loses a public site of social protection. The PM-POSHAN guidelines and national responses also recognise this: when disasters close schools, there are provisions for hot-meal alternatives or food security allowances—but these depend on rapid disaster recognition and administrative activation. PM Poshan+1
Not an accident: how local neglect signals systemic gaps
Belikot’s immediate profile—erosion damage not followed by a formal “flood-affected” declaration, a headmaster not reporting, and livestock occupying the premises—reveals failures at multiple governance nodes. These are not isolated operational lapses but predictable outcomes where policies lack enforced workflows for emergencies:
• Hazard identification and rapid damage assessment. National and state disaster-management frameworks call for rapid assessment teams and quick response; schools are recognised as vulnerable infrastructure whose damage should trigger immediate action. Yet in practice, many districts lack rapid school-level assessment, or assessments are delayed until political attention rises. Environment Surveillance Centre+1
• Formal damage-declaration and fund release. Schemes such as Samagra Shiksha provide for school repairs and resilience measures; but the release of funds and prioritisation depend on formal declarations and administrative prioritisation. News of damaged schools in other districts show that approvals can be slow and uneven. Samagra Education+1
• Continuity of nutrition and learning. PM-POSHAN is designed to feed millions and has contingency modalities (dry rations, community kitchens, or food security allowances) when schools close—but these modes are implemented only when administrative lines trigger them. Where a site is not formally designated “disaster-affected,” children are left without meals. PM Poshan+1
• Accountability for attendance and leadership. Teacher and headteacher absenteeism has been a persistent challenge in India; representative studies have repeatedly documented non-trivial absence rates, which transform temporary shocks into prolonged service gaps unless remedied swiftly. Semantic Scholar+1
Context: learning deficits and structural fragility
Policy statements—RTE’s guarantee of free and compulsory elementary education, Samagra Shiksha’s mandate to strengthen school effectiveness, and NEP-2020’s renewed stress on foundational literacy and numeracy—establish a robust legal and programmatic framework. But national surveys show that large foundational learning gaps persist; repeated ASER findings and academic studies indicate that many children in early grades cannot yet consistently read or compute at grade level. This makes any school closure especially costly: lost days are lost recovery time, and remedial catch-up is expensive and uncertain. National Education Portal+2Samagra Education+2
What Belikot tells us about equity
The children who suffer first and longest in cases like Belikot are those from marginalised castes, landless or smallholder households, and low-income families. These children cannot afford private tuition, cannot travel to distant functioning schools daily, and often depend on school meals for caloric intake. A local physical failure thus becomes an accelerant of pre-existing educational inequities: what begins as a site-specific neglect compounds into educational exclusion and nutritional insecurity for the most vulnerable.
Pragmatic, enforceable remedies (not rhetoric)
The response is not unknown; it is procedural. What is missing is prompt, enforceable application:
- Rapid damage-declaration protocol. District disaster teams and the education department must adopt a joint, time-bound trigger: an initial rapid assessment within 48 hours of reported structural damage, and a declaration (or refusal with public rationale) within 72 hours, to unlock contingency financing. This should be part of the School Development Plan template required under existing guidance. Department of School Education+1
- Emergency learning camps and temporary classrooms. Where building repair will take weeks, states must activate short-term learning centres (in community buildings, panchayat halls, or tents) staffed by rostered teachers or certified volunteers—an approach successfully used elsewhere after disasters. Samagra Shiksha already allows states flexibility to prioritise reconstruction; that flexibility must be operationalised quickly. Samagra Education+1
- Guaranteed nutritional continuity. PM-POSHAN contingency options—community kitchens, dry rations, or direct food security allowances—must be deployed automatically when schools are closed by damage, irrespective of formal disaster declarations that take weeks. The Ministry’s own guidelines and parliamentary responses recognise this need; operational rules must be updated to remove discretionary blocks. PM Poshan+1
- Transparent, public timelines and third-party oversight. Repair plans, funds released, contractors engaged, and completion timelines should be published at panchayat and block levels and subject to social-audit by local committees and civil society. Public timelines reduce slippage and politicisation.
- Attendance enforcement and leadership accountability. Where headteachers or staff are absent after a disaster, interim leadership must be appointed immediately and attendance audited; failure to report should trigger administrative inquiry and corrective action.
- Preventive school-safety audits and resilience investments. The NDMA and education departments already recommend school-safety planning; these must be funded and executed—especially in flood- and erosion-prone areas.
Conclusion: from footage to forceful public action
The image of a buffalo grazing inside a primary-school compound is shamefully evocative; it should prompt swift, not slow, response. Belikot is a local event with national implications: in a system that serves nearly 25 crore children, each broken school is a node of national educational loss. Policies like RTE, Samagra Shiksha and NEP-2020 provide legal and programmatic scaffolding—but scaffolding without enforced workflows, time-bound triggers, public transparency and local accountability is brittle. The remedy is procedural, not new legislation: fast damage declaration, immediate nutrition continuity, emergency learning alternatives, visible repair timelines and citizen oversight.
If the News Pinch footage is accurate to the summary, it must be treated not as an item for fleeting outrage but as the opening of an administrative case file—one that civil society, media and local elected officials should keep open until the school is repaired, teachers are present, and children are back in safe classrooms and fed. Anything less is a failure to defend the constitutional promise of elementary education.
sources
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