Dreaded annual ritual: Harshita sitting with her mother Devi in their shanty in New Delhi. The child is among nearly two million students in and around New Delhi told to stay home after authorities once again ordered schools to shut because of worsening air pollution. — AFP
Confined to her family’s ramshackle shanty by the toxic smog choking India’s capital, Harshita Gautam strained to hear her teacher’s instructions over a cheap mobile phone borrowed from her mother.
The nine-year-old is among nearly two million students in and around New Delhi told to stay home after authorities once again ordered schools to shut because of worsening air pollution.
Now a weary annual ritual, keeping children at home and moving lessons online for days at a time during the peak of the smog crisis in winter ostensibly helps protect the health of the city’s youth.
The policy impacts both the education and the broader well-being of schoolkids around the city – much more so for children from poorer families like Harshita.
“I don’t like online classes,” she said, sitting on a bed her family all share at night in their spartan one-room home in the city’s west.
“I like going to school and playing outside, but my mother says there is too much pollution and I must stay inside.”
Harshita struggles to follow the day’s lesson, with the sound of her teacher’s voice periodically halting as the connection drops out on the cheap Android phone.
Her parents both earn paltry incomes – her polio-stricken father by working at a roadside food stall and her mother as a domestic worker.
Neither can afford to skip work and look after their only child, and they do not have the means to buy air purifiers or take other measures to shield themselves from the smog.
Harshita’s confinement at home is an additional financial burden for her parents, who normally rely on a free-meal programme at her government-run school to keep her fed for lunch.
“When they are at school, I don’t have to worry about their studies or food. At home, they are hardly able to pay attention,” said Harshita’s mother Maya Devi.
“Why should our children suffer? They must find some solution.”
Delhi is blanketed in acrid smog each winter, primarily blamed on agricultural burning by farmers to clear their fields for ploughing, as well as factories and traffic fumes.
A 2021 study published in the medical journal Lung India found that nearly one in three school-aged children in the capital were afflicted by asthma and airflow obstruction.
Sunita Bhasin, director of the Swami Sivananda Memorial Institute school, said that pollution-induced school closures had been steadily increasing over the years.
“It’s easy for the government to give a blanket call to close the schools but... abrupt closure leads to a lot of disruptions,” she said. — AFP
