from Daijiworld's special correspondent (GA) - Pics - Sphoorti Ullal

Mangalore, Jun 30: These days if there is any business which is easy to start and best suited for profit-making, then it is should be starting a school.  To start one need not even have capital but only a plan.  Present the plan in the best way possible and donors would come ahead.
 
What happens and follows next is a lucrative future even at the cost of students studying there.  If funds are not enough to run the school, then influence one of the politicians, school would get government aid and the major worry is solved.  Thereafter the correspondent and the managing committee are usually least bothered about what to the students, what they do in the classroom and where they go during free time or after the school.  Though this is not the case of every school, but it is quite sure that many schools have been opened not to impart education primarily but to earn profits.

This could be well said about the a High School at Mastikatte near Ullal here.  There are a lot of students attending the school.  For all the fee and donations paid by the parents, the students are given a chance to learn swimming without paying a single pie.

All they have do is to go to the school ground which just behind the school and get into water which comes almost to the height of one's waist. Some of the boys do not even go home after the school, but directly go the ground and play in the water.  If the rains are heavy they have enough water to swim too.  Otherwise the boys are not short of any water games.

The locals say that this has been situation for several years.  One of the old students of the school says that the situation was same even when he was studying in the school.  Though the managing committee and concerned persons have been informed about the situation, they have merrily turned a deaf ear to the problem.  No measures to fill up the ground and raise it have yet been taken.  The ground turns into a swimming pool during every rainy season.

Playing in this dirty, red water is not hygienic even.  Chances of children falling ill  because of this water are plenty.  If the small children get into water, there are chances of their drowning as well.  But no one is bothered.  Management takes extra money for school development.  But where it is utilized only the committee knows.

The playground of the High School is inviting danger on every day basis.  Unless the persons concerned take measure to raise the level by filling extra earth, one should not get surprised to hear news of any fatal tragedy. 

Or, by chance, are they waiting just for that to happen?