GREATER NOIDA: It’s almost lunch time, but 100 students packed in a single room are busy jotting down notes. A social science class is in progress and Singh Sir is scribbling down key points in Hindi on the white board.
It is a combined co-ed class of students of standard 9 and 10. Seated uncomfortably and within sniffing distance of each other, yet no one dares to even whisper in Singh Sir’s class.
This is the only busy spot on the entire campus — the rest has little going on.
In 1963, Jawahar Intercollege was established in the heart of Maincha village, then a part of Bulandshahr district. For decades, children of nearby villages studied here and went on to become doctors, engineers and government officials.
But much water has flown under the bridge. Cut to 2021, the 17,000sqm campus with its 33 rooms, ochre walls, high-ceiling classrooms and tall trees appears more like a historic monument for curious visitors than a thriving school. It has around 500 students, but only eight teachers. But after the lockdown, only around 150 students are turning up, all of whom are being cramped into a single room, throwing social distancing to the wind.
It is not just the lockdown that has created a disinterest in the school, which used to be a popular educational hub even a decade ago. The villagers of Maincha have earned in lakhs by selling land to the Greater Noida Authority. They now prefer to send their children to modern institutions in the city, the teachers at Jawahar claimed.
“Everything has changed after the land acquisition. The farmers are wealthy now and they don’t want their children to come to this village school. They would rather send their kids to plush private schools. Old institutions like these are waiting to die. We literally go door to door and counsel parents to send their children to our school. We have well-educated teachers and we provide free books, uniforms and mid-day meals,” said Krishan Pal Singh (58), a former Armyman who has been running the school for the past 11 years.
“Till Class 8, there is no fee here, and from Class 9 onwards, it is just Rs 500 for the entire year. Still, there are no takers. Parents now are affluent, they want their children to go to a modern school. With the reduced numbers of students, our staff strength, too, has come down over the years. We had 40 staffers 10 years ago, now just 8. The 33 rooms are barely used and many of them are just shut. We have been requesting the government not to give private schools permission to open so freely. It is killing old institutions like Jawahar. In this village, there are two government primary schools. We are an aided inter-college and there are at least four private schools,” he added.
With land compensation from the Greater Noida Authority, many villagers have bought cars, built big houses and adopted a modern lifestyle. As the income of villagers has increased over the past decade, many private schools have come up in the area. Uma Public School, for instance, is a multi-storied CBSE-affiliated institution and seems to be quite popular among the villagers.
“There seems to be more schools than children here because a rich village is a good market for private schools,” Singh said.