Good education is all Rameshwar Mahato sought for his three grandchildren. Mahato wanted them to be at least as educated as the kids of well-off families around. It was an expensive proposition for a poor farmer like him. But it was a promise he had made to his son who works as a labourer in Punjab. On Tuesday, his world collapsed around him. The dead in the mid-day meal tragedy in the primary school at Dharmasati-Gandaman village included all three of his grandchildren.
‘They died one by one before my eyes and I was helpless. What will I tell my son?’ asked an inconsolable Mahato, watching at the lifeless bodies of his little grandchildren lying on the beds of the paediatrics ward of Patna Medical College and Hospital. While three-and-a-half-year-old Vikas Kumar and seven-year-old Aarati Kumari died on way to hospital, Shanti Kumari, 5, died in the course of treatment last night. Twenty-two school children have died so far.
‘Is it for what I had sent my kids to school?’ asked another villager Nagendra Rai amid bouts of hysterical wailing. ‘We had sent them to school to study, not to die.’ The mid-day meal tragedy has left Dharmasati-Gandaman shocked, sad and silent. It’s a village of poor farmers who eke out a living by working as farm labour. Most of them sacrificed on their personal indulgences to make their children study.
At the school, the scattered books, bags and pencils lying unattended on the floors say it all. ‘I am Rani…Your are Soni…We are girls…She is Muskan…They are students’ – this is how read the pages of the copybooks as the blowing wind turn them. These are sentences scribbled by tiny hands. The illiterate parents swelled in pride when their children recited English poems at homes and completed home works.
The grieving villagers are just not ready to believe that their children are no more. Just reusing to part with their fond memories, the grief-stricken villagers have dug up graves right in front of the school and buried the dead children. Of the 22 laid to rest in the graves, four were buried right in front of the classroom which till a few hours back would echo with their giggles and unending chattering.
‘He died in the school, so we buried him before the school…I will come everyday to meet him,’ said Bimla Devi, adding, ‘We have buried bodies in front of the school deliberately so that people would continue to remember this tragedy for generations.’ In fact, the entire school premises have turned into graveyard with small graves coming up every where.
As the news of mid-day meal tragedy continues to make headlines in the media, the panic-stricken children have stopped eating the meal in hundreds of schools across the state, apprehending death. The local media is full of stories how school children in several districts, such as Saharsa, Bhagalpur, Muzaffarpur, Patna and Gaya have refused taking cooked mid-day school in government schools.
In several districts, worried parents gave lunch boxes to their kids while cautioning them against taking mid-day meals anymore. ‘I will not eat mid-day meal…my mother has warned me against taking it,’ replied five-year-old Rohan, enrolled at a local primary school, Indrapuri, Patna on being asked Vithika Deonath.
If that is not enough, the Ekta Sahkti Foundation, an NGO supplying foods to some 2,200 schools spread over five districts of the state, has refused to supply food. The Foundation vice-president Mayur Mayank has said in several districts, their staffs were either roughed up or beaten up post Saran tragedy.
‘The angry people can do anything in the given situation…,’ said Mayank.
Trying to control the damage, however, the Education department in Bihar has inserted ads in various local dailies, asking the school principals to eat the mid-day meal first before allowing them to be served to the children. The school administrations have also been warned against storing food items with insecticides or fertiliser in any circumstances.
‘The school principals and the Education department inspectors are directed to taste the cooked midday meal first before being served to the children,’ says the ads issued by education department principal secretary Amarjeet Sinha.
