School audit campaign spotlights infra, hygiene gaps in govt schools

A school up to Class V is running with just two classrooms in Bihar. A school in Uttarakhand has no ceiling, leaving the floor exposed to rain during the monsoon. In a Haryana school, all doors are broken, including those of the washrooms. In Rajasthan, the quality of drinking water is so poor that even school authorities refuse to drink it.

 

These are some findings from one week of audits conducted by members and volunteers of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) under its School Thik Karo (clean up schools) campaign, launched on August 15. It is the CJP’s second mass project after it led a student movement from Delhi’s Jantar Mantar.

 

But even before the CJP announced its next plan, GenAlpha — the current schoolgoing generation — had already taken to the streets demanding basic infrastructure, hygiene and teaching staff in their schools.

 

“We had some idea about the next plan as students and parents who came to Jantar Mantar had expressed concerns about primary schooling in both the government and private sectors,” said Ratna Singh, legal head and spokesperson of CJP. But the wave of GenAlpha protests helped CJP gauge the extent of dissatisfaction with primary education. “Students were demanding basic facilities and didn’t wait for any leader. They made videos and posted them online. This is how we planned a volunteer-led school audit campaign,” she said.

 

The outfit initially planned the campaign for two months but is now unsure how long it will continue. “It has blown up. People are joining us, so it really depends on them how far this goes,” said Singh.

 

A week into the campaign, videos on the CJP’s Instagram handle are seeing engagement rates of over 600 per cent. Many audits are now being conducted by people not associated with the CJP, which the group sees as a “win”. But the campaign has also faced pushback, including restrictions on outsiders entering government schools and an FIR against CJP founder Abhijieet Dipke in Maharashtra. Some volunteers have also reported violence, Singh said.

 

“This issue is not at all new. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and activists have been fighting for years, but nobody had the reach and bandwidth to take this forward at this level,” said Santosh Phad, founder of Thinksharp, a Maharashtra-based NGO working to bridge the rural-urban education divide.

 

The concerns are beginning to get official attention, particularly with Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand among the five states scheduled to go to the polls early next year. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has issued a 14-point checklist for around 40,000 schools to assess basic facilities. The Rajasthan government, which revealed that 611 schools in the state were functioning without a building, has prepared a three-year road map with an estimated expenditure of ₹12,500 crore to transform government schools.

 

The campaign comes against the backdrop of a NITI Aayog report released in August that said 94,000 government schools were shut down between 2014-15 and 2024-25. According to Unesco’s 2026 Sustainable Development Goal 4 Scorecard, India spends 4.1 per cent of its gross domestic product on education, just above the 4 per cent minimum benchmark. However, education’s share of total public expenditure has fallen to 14.2 per cent, below Unesco’s recommended 15 per cent.

 

“When you merge a school, dropouts tend to rise because for some it becomes too far, while others don’t want the change. Then, when dropout rises, they are listed for closure. It is a cycle,” said Tarun Kanti Naskar, general secretary of the All India Save Education Committee.

 

The GenAlpha population is estimated at around 340 million, and some will be first-time voters in the 2029 Lok Sabha elections.

 

“It is now established that a strong movement can achieve public demands. We will be meeting the Union and state governments on September 10 and submit a People’s Education Policy draft,” said Naskar, who has previously served as a member of the Legislative Assembly from West Bengal. 

Stepping up youth outreach 

In brainstorming sessions over the last few days, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have sought to overhaul their messaging to India’s educated youth. The Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, has also continued his youth outreach, holding the latest episode of his 'Chhatron ki Goonj' event in Pune on Saturday evening. 

The BJP plans to reach out to university students via a dedicated team headed by its national president Nitin Nabin. Meanwhile, Congress’s Gandhi pointed to PM Narendra Modi’s remark that he was shocked to hear girls using abusive language during the recent protest at Jantar Mantar, criticising the “Manusmriti mindset” and urged girl students to “smash patriarchy”. The RSS held a threeday coordination meeting in Visakhapatnam last week, which was attended by the top leadership of all its affiliates. According to an RSS statement, it deliberated in detail on “the thinking, aspirations, creative potential and concerns about the future of the younger generation, as well as their role in nation-building.”  Archis Mohan