‘Pariksha pe charcha’, a testing time for officials

Nagpur: District’s education office had a busy day on Tuesday trying to ensure government and aided schools broadcast prime minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Pariksha pe charcha” programme. The New Delhi event, in which PM Modi interacted with students, was broadcast on TV, radio and social media. Education officials at taluka level had their task cut out with written orders to ensure the broadcast was seen by the students and mandatorily file a report online by 2pm.
A letter sent from district’s education office (primary) directed all taluka level officials to also email five photos and a three minute video clip of the event as evidence. The letter made it clear if the online report was not filed on time, the official “will be held responsible”. Officials were also asked to tell the schools arrangements for generators must be made in case they were apprehensive about power supply from the grid.

An education official said in rural areas it was difficult to visit every school because of the distance between each, so they would rely on school versions. “Thanks to social media, we can get updates very fast without the need to be in every school. In a majority of schools there was a good response with students enthusiastically listening to the PM. Requirement of follow up report and photos could have been avoided because then it feels like official work rather than counseling session from the PM,” said an official.

Regardless, some schools both in rural and urban areas skipped the broadcast. A government school for specially abled children had problems with the broadcast time of 11am. “Our school starts at that time and it would not have been possible to call these children at least two hours early and get the entire audio-video set up done. It was a good event, but unfortunately our timings clashed,” a teacher said.

Another school said that it would have disrupted their schedule. “We have exams going on and we would have had to change too many things to accommodate the broadcast,” said another teacher. Another school that skipped the broadcast plans to show a recording of the event later on to students. “We have shift system in school and the broadcast timing was not conducive,” said principal of the school.

A majority of the schools was able to broadcast it live for their students where Modi talked to students about preparing for exams and also about dealing with stress.