Indian teachers fear postcards from irate parents
Poor families wield unusual weapon in battle to get disgusting schools to listen to complaints
Teachers in government schools live in fear of the humble postcard.
In the hands of poor parents in the Indian capital who find that a teacher isn't listening to their complaints, the postcard is a powerful weapon.
"The parents are usually illiterate but the children write their complaint about the school on it and post it to a judge," said Ashok Aggarwal, the lawyer spearheading the "postcard campaign".
The campaign stems from desperation. Government schools are stinking slums. The toilets don't flush, the fans don't work despite the intense heat, each class has 120-150 children, and the teachers are too busy gossiping, knitting or playing cards to teach.
A survey in March by the NGO CRY found that 37 per cent of toilets in government schools were so dirty that children were forced to urinate in the open.
Complaints are invariably ignored. Fed up, Aggarwal hit upon the idea of handing out postcards to children in several neighbourhoods, urging them write to judges in the Delhi High Court.
About 300 postcards have been posted in the past few months in a campaign co-ordinated by voluntary group Project Why.