Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
The Tricolour was in their hands, but the slogans were not about patriotism alone. They were about broken classrooms, missing teachers, dirty toilets, unsafe buildings, inadequate benches, unreliable drinking water and schools that, in many places, seem to have been forgotten by the very system meant to run them.
Students of government schools are stepping out of their classrooms and are taking to the streets. A striking pattern emerged across the country even as India marked its 80th Independence Day on Saturday. From Uttar Pradesh to Bihar, Maharashtra to Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh to Rajasthan and Chandigarh, children are barricading school gates, blocking roads, sitting on dharnas and marching to government offices. The words of these students might vary from state to state. The demand is increasingly the same: “Hamara school thik karo (fix our schools)”.
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The agitations across the country come at time when the Cockroach Janta Party’s (CJP) founder and convenor, Abhijeet Dipke, announced a nationwide movement ‘School Thik Karo’, which was kickstarted from August 15. The CJP was earlier successful in getting the resignation of BJP MP Dharmendra Pradhan as Union Education Minister over the question paper leaks of NEET-UG 2026 examinations and other alleged irregularities in the education system.
The CJP, which transformed from being a starical social media handle into a pressure group, has turned its focus on fixing government schools.
The first protest by students started days after the CJP ended its Jantar Mantar protest after Pradhan’s resignation. Several protests have taken place since, and they weren’t backed by the CJP. But the CJP is now amplifying these protests under its ‘School Thik Karo’ campaign.
STUDENTS KNOW WHERE TO PROTEST FOR TEACHERS, FANS, HAND PUMPS
On August 11, around 200 children and their parents from Chandupur village in Uttar Pradesh’s Hamirpur district marched towards the district collectorate. Their demand was very basic; a paved road to their school. On July 27, students of Sarvodaya Inter College in Fatehpur staged a campus protest over a lack of basic facilities. The demonstration eventually prompted the school administration to issue a written assurance that their demands would be addressed.
In Lucknow, students of Jai Prakash Narayan Sarvodaya Vidyalaya took their protest to the road at Buddheshwar crossing, blocking traffic over a shortage of teachers.
In Bihar’s Gaya district, students at Simuara Middle School sat down for a massive dharna (sit-in) on July 31 over lack of basic amenities. Fans had stopped functioning. Hand pumps had fallen apart. Benches were in poor condition. Around 50 students protested outside the SDM’s office, and left only after an inquiry committee was formed.
On July 30, in Dahanu, a town in Maharashtra’s Palghar district, a group of students raised concerns over poor infrastructure and inhumane conditions.
In Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain, hundreds of schoolgirls have come out against plans to merge and shift several government schools to Daudkhedi, around six to 10 kilometres from their existing locations and outside the city limits.
In Chandigarh, school students with hearing and speaking disabilities also came out to protest for basic facilities and better education. They demanded professional faculty and better teaching facilities.
Then children joined protests, not for better schools, but for the environment, land and the future of the communities in which their schools exist.
On July 11, students of Tamil Nadu’s Kodali village joined local residents in demanding the closure of a state-run liquor outlet.
In Karnataka’s Bidadi, students became part of another local battle. In July, farmers sought their support while protesting plans to develop an AI City and data centres over a proposed 9,600-acre area of fertile farmland. The protesters warned that more than 10 lakh trees could be at risk.
CJP’S ‘SCHOOL THIK KARO’ CAMPAIGN ENTERS THE PICTURE
Amid the backdrop of these scattered protests across the country, a new campaign emerged with a simple slogan “School Thik Karo” (Fix the School).
The campaign was announced around August 11–12 and formally launched on Independence Day (August 15) by the CJP’s Abhijeet Dipke from his native village of Santuk Pimpri in Maharashtra’s Hingoli district.
Dipke travelled to the village, attended the Independence Day flag-hoisting ceremony and then visited a Zilla Parishad school. Dipke alleged a familiar list of problems at the government school, like toilets without water, broken windows and too few benches for students.
His argument was blunt, “India can build a new Parliament and a new Prime Minister’s residence, but why can it not build adequate schools in its villages?”
“Do we not consider the children of farmers and labourers the future of our country?” he asked while urging parents to conduct audits of their children’s schools.
The CJP’s campaign is built around a proposition that parents and communities should stop waiting for governments to discover problems and start documenting them themselves.
The initiative focuses particularly on rural government and Zilla Parishad schools and proposes social audits, community participation and engagement with local authorities, including sarpanches.
The campaign’s checklist includes electricity, drinking water, separate functional toilets for boys and girls, adequate benches and quality midday meals. Parents and residents are expected to be able to report deficiencies through a standardised assessment form, including by submitting videos through social media.
The CJP’s ambition is national. An early target mentioned for the campaign is to improve facilities in at least 100 schools within around two months.
CJP’S CAMPAIGN AT RAJASTHAN’S CLASSROOMS BECOME FLASHPOINT
The CJP’s School Thik Karo campaign has now reached Rajasthan. On August 14, around 50 CJP activists led by the outfit’s co-convener Ashutosh Ranka joined students and local residents protesting outside the Government Senior Secondary School at Jodhawas in the Thanagazi block of Alwar district.
The school had witnessed a slab falling from its roof earlier in the week. Worse, five of its six senior teacher posts were vacant.
Students and local residents had already been protesting for two days over the condition of the school.
The demonstration turned tense when Ranka and others got into a heated argument with police personnel. While arguing with police, Ranka invoked the student protest at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar that he said had led to the resignation of the Union Education Minister.
“The interests of students in Rajasthan will not be allowed to be compromised,” he said.
Addressing the protesters, Ranka claimed that around 84,000 classrooms across Rajasthan were in a dilapidated condition and that the situation put the future of around 15 lakh children at risk.
In the evening, senior officers of the Education Department met the protesters and held talks. Chief District Education Officer Mahesh Gupta said the shortage of teachers would be addressed and steps would be taken to resolve all grievances.
From a village in Hamirpur to a school in Fatehpur, from Gaya to Dahanu, from Tamil Nadu to Ujjain and from Alwar to Chandigarh, the geography keeps changing, but the protagonists, at least at the forefront, are children. The language changes too. But the demand remains remarkably consistent. Fix the school. That makes the timing particularly significant.
The protests were inspired by the CJP’s agitation at Jantar Mantar, and the youth-led outfit is now highlighting the issues flagged by the schoolkids.
– Ends
SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
