Frustrated Hyderabad parents immerse other 'GODs' with Ganesha

On Sunday evening, the Hyderabad School Parents Association (HSPA) immersed, along with the Elephant God, four other `GODs', or government orders They say the GODs were useless pieces of paper The parents' association is protesting exorbitant school fees despite government orders to curb them. 

It was meant to be symbolism at several levels. Lord Ganesha who wrote the longest epic in the world, the Mahabharata for Ved Vyas, was putting his might behind hapless parents of school students in Hyderabad.

So on Sunday evening, when the Hyderabad School Parents Association (HSPA) went to the city's Hussainsagar lake, they immersed, along with the Elephant God, four other `GODs'. These Gods were the Government Order Documents that the Association says are not worth the paper they are printed on.

The immersion of the sarkaari GODs was accompanied by slogans of Ganapati Bappa Morya, school fee ki loot bandh karo'.

For years now, the HSPA has been fighting against exorbitant fees charged by private schools. In several cases, the fee hike every new academic year is in the range of 20% to 50%.

This, despite the government orders MS1 and MS91 which clearly stipulate that fee hikes can happen only with a go-ahead from the district fee regulation committee and the concurrence of the Parents Teachers Association. 

“We are appealing to Lord Ganesha to help us,” says N Subramanyam, President of HSPA. “We have requested the political leadership several times to do something in this regard but it has not helped in any way.”

The HSPA has been demanding that the Telangana government rein in the private school managements in Hyderabad but to no avail. Before the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections, the TRS had promised it will do so but the promise was forgotten soon after. 

The Andhra Pradesh High court in 2010 had limited the admission fee in private schools to ₹5000 per student. The GO MS91 that talks about this aspect was also issued but schools flout the norms openly.

A petition in the High Court shocked the bench when it accused over one hundred private schools in Hyderabad of collecting what it called a One Time Fee between ₹5 to 7 lakh per student during admission time. This money is supposed to be for building construction and in many cases, paid in cash. 

With the government not helping to ensure the GO is obeyed, only a petition in the High court this year ensured three schools fell in line. One of them, Kangaroo Kids School cut its admission fee from ₹28000 which it had charged for 2015-16 to ₹5000 for 2016-17. 

The government, it would seem, has a vested interest in turning a blind eye to the private school mafia in Hyderabad. With standards in government schools abysmal thanks to shortage of qualified teachers and teaching material, school education is traversing the path of technical education, with capitation fee the norm right from the time a child joins school.

An official in the Telangana Education minister's office says it is difficult for the government to wield the stick on private schools. “The parents are admitting the children on their own. They should assess their own affordability. If we question the schools, they ask, how do you expect us to pay our teachers and maintain infrastructure?”

The situation is no better if not worse, in rural Telangana. Many parents, whether they can afford it or not, prefer to send their children, particularly the boys, to private English medium schools that charge a school bus fee in addition to the school tuition fee.

The total amount is often more than 50% of a farmer's income. But the desperation to let gen-next escape the uncertainties of a farmer's life compels the family to take on the extra burden.

Nizamabad MP Kavitha Rao claims the government is focusing on improving the quality of government schooling and claims admissions are increasing. “Several village committees have decided not to let private school buses into their village,” she says, as proof that things are changing. 

But numbers tell a different story.