BHOPAL: Time and tide wait for none. Nor do teachers of two govt schools in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhind, floating on tubes, paddling and bobbing up on a rain-fed river to beat an unforgiving e-attendance app.The six male teachers navigate the seasonal obstacle course across the swollen Baisali river to reach two schools in Nadrauli and Sumer Singh Ka Pura villages in Bhind’s Babedi area. A video of one of the schoolteachers on an inflated tyre tube has gone viral, highlighting the dangers residents face after heavy rains.While the teachers manage to get through the swirling waters, several of the 100 students in the two schools fail to make it to class during monsoon.The villages can only be reached by crossing the Baisali, which does not have a bridge and shrinks at other times of the year into a shallow, sand-heavy brook. Monsoon unleashes a tide of adversity. With the river overflowing and flooding farms, the teachers find their daily two-wheeler commutes turn into tube trips.The stakes are high: arrive late and the attendance app, made mandatory since Jan this year, may trigger a pay cut. “We used to wait earlier for the waters to subside. It used to take four to five hours and we would come in a little late. But now, the app doesn’t understand anything,” said a teacher.Forced into the aquatic commute to ward off salary cuts for delays, the teachers fretted that the education department’s e-attendance drive reflected a complete lack of concern for their safety.Asked about the problems, district education officials claimed the situation “had not been flagged” earlier. They have now formed a panel to look at “technical and practical improvements” in the e-attendance system.The teachers have been urged to explain their monsoon miseries to the committee. Their requests are straightforward: build a bridge or seasonal paths, or allow reasonable exemptions in e-attendance timings when nature brings interruptions and log-in hits a logjam.
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