In a circular issued on Saturday, the Directorate of School Education Kashmir (DSEK) instructed school heads to ensure that schools wore a “festive” look ahead of their reopening on March 1 after winter vacation.
The DSEK emphasized that the occasion should be celebrated to create a welcoming atmosphere and encourage students to return to a positive and engaging learning environment.
In light of this directive, I took it upon myself to visit some schools, particularly middle and high, to see how well the “festive reopening” vision aligned with reality. What I saw was nothing short of alarming. Inside the very classrooms meant for learning, I found sheep and stray dogs taking shelter—right where students are supposed to sit and study.
In such conditions, the health and safety risks for students are unimaginable. Young children, exposed to animal waste and unhygienic surroundings, are at constant risk of bacterial infections, respiratory diseases, and parasitic infestations. The unchecked presence of stray dogs heightens the danger—one sudden attack, a rabid bite, and an entire classroom could be thrown into chaos.
How do you create a “welcoming ambience” in schools where children share space with livestock? Where broken windows let in the cold and rain?
The government’s own “Vision Document” published in 2023 indicated that nearly 5000 government schools, especially in remote and hilly areas, suffer from a lack of basic facilities, including proper classrooms, heating arrangements, sanitation, and adequate teaching resources.
Senior officials, particularly those at the ranks of Secretary and Director of Education, often focus their attention on select schools within city limits—institutions they frequently visit. As a result, these schools receive disproportionate attention, while those in remote and underprivileged areas remain summarily neglected.
School heads in these “well-monitored” institutions ensure their campuses appear festive by putting up colourful buntings and decorative flowers, creating a visually appealing setting. The process is often superficial—once the decorations are in place, photographs are taken, videos are recorded, and the content is promptly shared in official WhatsApp groups. This gives the illusion of compliance with directives, satisfying higher-ups without addressing deeper systemic issues.
However, beyond these staged visuals, the realities of thousands of schools struggling with inadequate infrastructure remain unaddressed, making such directives more about optics than meaningful improvement.
Education departments in India are largely managed by bureaucrats who often lack direct experience in the education sector.
In Jammu and Kashmir, these departments are typically overseen by senior JKAS officers who are transferred from various other administrative roles, bringing with them expertise in governance but little to no background in pedagogy, curriculum development, or student engagement.
Take the case of Dr. G.N. Itoo, the current Director of School Education Kashmir. Before assuming this role, he served as the Mission Director of Jal Shakti, where his primary responsibility was ensuring the distribution of potable water to remote areas. While this role undoubtedly involved administrative efficiency and logistical management, it has little to do with the complexities of education policy, school administration, or pedagogy.
Though Dr. Itoo has previously held the position of Director of School Education Kashmir, his career trajectory also includes diverse assignments such as Director of Tourism Kashmir, Deputy Commissioner of Baramulla, and Director of Estates—each requiring different administrative skills but not necessarily expertise in the field of education.
This raises an important question: How can an officer with a background in water supply, tourism, and district administration effectively address the nuanced challenges of the education system?
The lack of domain-specific knowledge among senior education officials often results in policies that are disconnected from ground realities. The trend of appointing bureaucrats with little to no background in education to oversee crucial policy decisions is not just puzzling; it’s outright detrimental to the system.
Take Alok Kumar, a bureaucrat from the Indian Revenue Service (IRS), Bihar cadre. At one point, he wasn’t managing just one or two departments—no, he was juggling five: Higher Education, School Education, Medical and Health Services, Aviation, and Estates.
If multitasking had an Olympic category, Alok Kumar would’ve taken gold. But let’s be honest—how can one individual possibly bring meaningful reform in five vastly different sectors at the same time? The idea that someone trained in revenue collection could seamlessly transition into education policymaking speaks volumes about how the system views expertise: as an optional extra, not a necessity.
Then there is Rajiv Rai Bhatnagar. His tenure as Director General of the CRPF coincided with the deadliest Pulwama terrorist attack, where 40 paramilitary personnel lost their lives. Yet he was later appointed as an advisor to oversee the Education in J&K. The logic? Unclear. What insights a former top cop could bring to curriculum design, pedagogy, or school infrastructure remains a mystery.
But, in the bureaucratic universe, it seems experience in handling security somehow translates to expertise in shaping young minds.
And then there’s the pièce de résistance: Suresh Kumar Gupta, an Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer, who just handed the reigns to Shantmanu (IAS) as secretary education. A forest officer managing schools—because in the grand scheme of things, trees and textbooks are obviously interchangeable. Maybe it’s all part of some grand eco-education experiment where school infrastructure is expected to sprout organically like a well-tended forest. Or maybe it’s just another example of how little regard the system has for domain expertise. Before Alok Kumar, another IFS officer, B K Singh, manned the Education Department at the secretary level.
Rather than formulating long-term strategies to address infrastructural deficits, learning gaps, and teacher training needs, directives tend to focus on optics—such as festive re-openings—while fundamental issues like dilapidated school buildings, lack of proper heating, and outdated teaching methods remain unresolved.
Without experienced educators in leadership roles, the education system continues to be treated as just another administrative portfolio, rather than a specialized field demanding dedicated expertise.
This directive, coming from those who rarely step beyond city schools, feels not just out of touch but almost farcical.
The reality is that the government’s own reports acknowledge the infrastructural deficiencies in thousands of schools across Jammu and Kashmir. And yet, instead of addressing these pressing issues, instructions to make schools look festive are circulated just for the heck of it. What good is decoration when the very foundation of a safe and healthy learning environment is missing?
- Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer
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