New Delhi, May 9 (IANS): Even as the government is encouraging online studies to students amid the coronavirus lockdown, teachers and students are facing difficulties in the absence of stationery and books prescibed in their syllabi.

While bookshops have been allowed to reopen in many states, including Delhi, a large number of shop owners are yet to resume business operations. Even a majority of shops selling stationery are closed.

Almost all publishing houses on the Ansari Road in Daryaganj are closed. Many well-known bookstores selling books on medical, engineering, economics and history are still to resume business in the area. Many publishers who provide books for private schools too are closed.

A similar situation prevails in Nai Sadak where school books are sold. The shops are yet to reopen. A similar situation prevails in Daryaganj.

Anil Gupta, owner of a stationery store in Nai Sadak, said: "Since the government has allowed us to reopen shops, we have resumed business. But customers are still missing. This is because schools are still closed and, then, students and their parents are not ready to take health risks by coming out to markets."

Even the businesses dealing in paper are yet to resume operations. This has led to non-availability of notebooks to students, apart from other stationary items.

Union Human Resource Development Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank had told students during a webinar that directions have been issued to officials to ensure availability of NCERT books to students. He said that directions were also issued to the states to ensure availability of academic books to students and the same had been issued to different state governments.

Aniket, a student of a school on the Lodhi Road in south Delhi, said: "We are getting taught through WhatsApp and YouTube but we neither have text books nor study books. We daily receive a page from our study book, which we have to copy down in our text books.

The whole process is complicated and tiring. Also, maintaining a proper sequence of notes is a problem."

Anu Rai, a teacher in a private school in Faridabad, said: "Students are facing quite many problems in the absence of academic books. We are at present sending brief study material through mobile phones daily as sending the whole book in one go is an impossibility."

Niharika from Adarsh Nagar in Delhi said: "We have to prepare teaching matter from mobile phones daily before lecturing students online in the absence of course books. We are adding a page of course material daily to make students study."