Mou Chakraborty & Sujit Nath
Kolkata, April 24, 2007
The shortage of NCERT books, followed by CBSE schools is hitting the students hard. Particularly affected are students of Class IX and Class XII.
Taking advantage, unscrupulous traders are charging an exorbitant price for the books. The English Kaleidoscope and English Flamingo for Class XII, which cost Rs 30 are available for Rs 150. The Physics-I of Class XII is available for Rs 250 to Rs 300. The actual price is Rs 125.
Santosh Pathak on a visit to Kolkata, said, “I came from New Delhi with a hope that I will get books for my daughter. They are charging an exorbitant price. However, I don’t have any other options, so I bought the books.”
The booksellers said that NCERT has failed to publish an adequate numbers of books and therefore there is a major shortfall. “The entire syllabus has changed and the NCERT has failed to print the books,” Baren Das, a College Street bookseller said.
However, speaking to Hindustan Times, a senior NCERT official, Vishnu Chandra Patra, said, “There is no crisis of books in Bengal. We have our regional production and distribution centre at Panihati. The crisis is being created by booksellers.”
Last year, NCERT published 2.75 crore textbooks. Due to the change in syllabus and to avoid a crisis, we have printed 4.98 crore textbooks. “There are only 6810 CBSE schools in India, so how can there be a crisis,” said Patra. However, he added that schools eyeing for CBSE affiliation, prescribe NCERT books to their students, which sometimes creates a problem.
The worst sufferers are the student of Class X. “There are no books. We are taking advance money from the students and they are getting the books after a week,” said Shankar Das, another bookseller at College Street.
The marked price for the three Class X English books is Rs 100. It is available for Rs 115. Similarly, Class IX books of history and political science are available for anything between Rs 150 to Rs 200. The actual price for the books is between Rs 50 to Rs 75.
It is mandatory for schools to put NCERT books on the booklist or else their CBSE affiliation is cancelled. The principal of Hariyana Vidyamandir, Basudev Bhattacharya, said, “Even this year the NCERT had asked us to send requisitions for books required for our school through our recognised bookseller. The formalities were completed two months back, but the books have not arrived.”
To avoid the crisis, the schools are downloading the NCERT books from Internet and distributing photocopies of the first two chapters to all its students.
While the books are unavailable with booksellers and the schools, the students are flocking to NCERT’s regional production and distribution centre at Panihati. However, they are returning empty handed.
“After standing in the queue for an hour I got only one book,” said Bidhan Sarkar, parent of a Class IX student of Bharatiya Vidyabhavan.
Principal of Birla High School for Boys, Mukta Nain, said, “Schools follow NCERT books because the board examinations are based on these texts. This is why the shortage is felt most from Class IX to Class XII.”
mou.hindustantimes@yahoo.com
sujit.nath@hindustantimes.com
From pillar to post
· Students from Class IX to Class XII are most affected
· Unscrupulous traders have jacked up book prices
· Booksellers blame NCERT for not publishing an adequate number of booksSchools are downloading the books from the Internet
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