Andhra Pradesh, India: Tribal students from Andhra Pradesh’s Vizianagaram district marched along a damaged and dug-up pathway last week, calling for the construction of a proper road linking their remote villages to the nearest school.
Carrying photographs of Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan around their necks, the students walked across the severely deteriorated stretch to highlight their daily hardships, NDTV reported. “We struggle every day, travelling nearly 12 kilometres through hilly terrain just to reach school. Please build a road for us. We want to study,” they appealed.
The demonstration was led by students from Rayapalem, Munupurai, Chappanigadda, Vippamanuvalasa and Pallapudungada villages, who said the poor condition of the route makes commuting extremely difficult, particularly during bad weather.
They urged the government to urgently ensure basic road connectivity so that their access to education remains uninterrupted.
In a separate incident last December, a 10-year-old girl in Madhya Pradesh’s Betul district blocked a road after her school van failed to arrive. Surabhi Yadav, a Class 5 student, sat on the road holding her school bag and refused to move for nearly three hours, forcing vehicles to halt as drivers waited.
Yadav, enrolled under the Right to Education Act, travels around 18 kilometres each day to attend school. The school management had reportedly stopped providing van services after her family allegedly did not pay transportation charges for the previous two years.
Earlier, in September last year, at least 90 students from a school in Arunachal Pradesh’s Pakke Kesang district undertook a 65-kilometre march to draw attention to what they described as a severe shortage of teachers at their institution.
Holding placards that read “A school without a teacher is just a building,” the students said their repeated requests for additional teachers had gone unanswered by both school authorities and officials in the education department.