Where school means 8 hours of holding back from going to toilet

Literacy: 56.1% (women 37.6%)

Sanitation status: Lack of toilets in schools identified as main reason for high dropout among girls, over a thousand toilets built in 2008-12.

Rajakiya Kanya Madhyamik Pathshala in Mewat district’s Shah Chaukha village has 786 girls on the rolls between nursery and Class VIII. In 2008, a toilet was constructed, but within months, it shut down for lack of water.

School headmaster Muzammil Hussain has a thick file in his office containing the official communication between him and the district administration since 2012 for a toilet. After his first letter, where he wrote that the school had no functional toilet for the girl students (then numbering 540), forcing them to go to the fields, Rs 58,000 was allotted by the district administration within four months to construct two toilets.

But then the matter got stuck with the gram panchayat. “Members disagreed over where to construct the toilets. Some said the girls’ school should be expanded to include the boys’ school; others said the first toilets should be built in the boys’ school,” Hussain says.

Eventually, the administration withdrew the money, directing that “no new construction be undertaken till the issue is resolved by the gram panchayat”. That was the closest Rajakiya Kanya Madhyamik Pathshala came to having a toilet.

Mewat district has been the subject of many studies by the Ministries of Woman and Child Development (WCD) and Human Resource Development, as well as the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA), for its high dropout rates among girls, particularly of the dominant Meo Muslim community. In 2009, the lack of toilets in schools was identified as a possible reason for the poor educational indicators.

A 2012 report on Punhana block in Mewat by the WCD Ministry showed 300 students on an average sharing one toilet, with 2,400 girl students having 10 toilets between them. In Nagina block, there were 16 toilets for 2,700 girls; in Firozpur Jhirka block, 15 toilets for 1,800 students.

As per the HRD Ministry’s District Information System for Education, 2013, of 175 schools in Firozpur Jhirka block, 20 girls’ and 30 boys’ schools were without toilets, while 10 and five respectively had dysfunctional toilets. In Punhana block with 188 schools, there were no toilets in 13 girls’ and 37 boys’ schools while in 26 and 27, respectively, toilets were dysfunctional.

The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, launched in 2000-01, and the central sanitation policy that was christened NBA in 2010, stipulate separate toilets for girls in school. A 2009 order by the Directorate of School Education, Haryana, further states that there should be separate toilets for girls, boys and the staff, with one toilet added for each additional 150 students.

NBA figures show toilets built in 96 per cent schools — at least on paper. However, water facility is available in only 10 per cent.

In most schools, The Indian Express found, after toilets became dysfunctional for some reason, including lack of water or sweepers, the girls were the first to venture into the fields. Boys and teachers continued to use the functional toilets. If only one functional toilet remained, the teachers used it.

Muskaan, a Class IV student of Rajakiya Kanya Madhyamik Pathshala in Shah Chaukha village, walks 1 km to the fields near her home, during lunch break, to go to the toilet. “There are fields behind the school too, but the boys’ school is nearby and they use those fields,” she says.

Headmaster Hussain has other pressing concerns. “In 2008, the school was expanded from primary to middle, but no teacher has been appointed yet for Classes VI to VIII. So primary school teachers have to manage them. We teach the subjects we understand. Maths, Sanskrit and science are ignored,” he says.

No new rooms were added either, forcing all the classes to be packed into two rooms — four rows each to a room, one class to a row. There are no fans or drinking water, while electricity is erratic. The school has no boundary wall.

In the Mewat Development Agency records, two co-ed schools, in Mahua and Tegaon villages of Firozpur Jhirka block, have toilet facilities for girls. Four years ago, the Mahua school did construct two toilets, The Indian Express found, but one is for teachers and the other for boys. Headmaster Krishan Kumar says he has been calling up the district authorities every week since his posting a year ago to seek a toilet for girls. Of the 794 students on the school’s rolls, 452 are girls.

Razia, 16, who is in Class VIII, says she holds going to the toilet for the eight hours of school. “But it is a problem when my menstrual cycle is on. I get one of my friends to hold a chunni as I go to the fields. The new headmaster is nice though. During such emergencies, he allows us to use the teachers’ toilet.”

But here too, there is no water, and the temporary sweeper brings buckets from his home for use.

The Tegaon village school has 400 girl students and an impressive four toilets — for teachers, boys and girls — built in 2010. However, none is usable now. Teachers used the only functional one till last year. Wasim, a Class VIII student, says since the last toilet fell into disuse, the school closes by 11.30 am-noon. “When teachers could use the toilets, classes would go on till 2.30 pm. Now, they close the school early and run.”

At 1 pm on a weekday, the school was shut. While headmaster of the middle school Fakhruddin dismissed it as a “rare day” later, the two women teachers acknowledged that lack of toilets was behind the early shutting of schools. “The school opens into the mountains, where the men teachers and students go. There is not even any field, and most homes in the village do not have toilets. We come from Nuh block. How is it possible to stay from 8 am-2.30 pm without a single usable toilet?” one of them said.

The four toilets built at Rajakiya Kanya Madhyamik Vidyalaya in Mandikheda village in Nagina block in 2008-10 are also dysfunctional. Girls squat along the roads or just go home. The only one that works is used by teachers.

The headmistress doesn’t mind the children going home, but wonders why provision can’t be made for even drinking water. “Students carry two water bottles — one to use if they need to go to toilet in the fields, and one for drinking.”

In Nuh block, at a senior secondary school in Malab village, where 1,200 students are enrolled, 12 toilets have been constructed for the primary, middle and senior sections since 2008. Now only a single toilet in the middle school is functional. Girls can use it, but teachers stand guard to ensure it is used “only to urinate and not defecate”. It is to make sure the toilet stays clean, the headmaster says.

At the co-ed middle school in Salaheri village in the same block, teachers clean the two functional toilets themselves. Four toilets at the school are non-functional while the two girls’ toilets are locked. “They have expanded the school to a middle school, but not created any teacher posts in four years. So now us junior school teachers manage students, teach three extra classes subjects we don’t have a grasp on, and clean toilets, that too without water,” says a teacher.

The headmistress says she will fight for a toilet but once her demand for a boundary wall is cleared. “We open directly into the fields, and every day, I get complaints of four-five students being eveteased,” she says.

On paper though, even that demand is accounted for. The 2013-14 plan of the Mewat Development Agency included creating 177 girls’ toilets, 443 boys’ toilets, 237 drinking water facilities and, for 32 schools, 7.8814-metre length of boundary walls.