The assembly is delayed. Some students are still walking in, touching the feet of their teachers as they pass them by. A few bend down and touch ours too. While the students gather for assembly, some sweep the classrooms before classes begin.
We are told it is the students who clean the classrooms and premises, including the toilets. The school has no peons, and barring the cook -- who prepares khichdi for lunch every week day which is given free to all school children from Class I to V in the state government schools -- the school has no additional support staff.
The children do not wear uniforms because they have none. The government hopes to provide uniforms to all children and cycles for girls but that is yet to arrive.
The children walk to school from neighbouring villages, most of whose parents are uneducated, poor farmers. They carry books in a cloth bag. Some bring with them a gunny sack, over which they sit for classes under a cluster of mango and litchi trees.
There are classrooms for every class but because the number of students -- 1,023 -- cannot be accommodated in the classes, the students from class I to IV sit in the ground outside.
Image: Two girls from Meena Manch, a UNICEF-aided programme for the empowerment of the girl child, with a boy who was withdrawn from school to work as a hired help. The Meena Manch girls from this school persuaded his parents to stop making the boy work as a child labourer and succeeded. Chotu, the boy, is now back in school.
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