Column

I know a class I student from Podar School in Santa Cruz staying in Powai. He starts his day by commuting for three hours in a day (to and fro), a number which is higher than a 30-year-old travelling from Dombivli to CST for work on a daily basis. I think I have a compelling argument up my sleeve. In my humble opinion, students should not be going to school in a school bus at all, at least if they happen to be residing in Mumbai!

Correct me, if I’m wrong but most grown up Indians even those holding some top notch positions in the government or in the corporate sector have never taken a transport bus to school. Either they walked up to their school or stayed in the boarding accommodation. Obviously, who needs a bus to get to the village school? You also don’t need a school bus to get to the neighbourhood government school? Since these folks don’t take the bus, their thinking is not oriented towards that system of transport and they have better things to do (Don’t think that those who schooled in 70s and 80s are in the business of farming).

Neither have they spilled more smoke into the air than yesterday, nor do they organise conferences to talk about how we can all talk to ourselves about not spilling so much smoke! (Hope I’m not offending the leading lights who were at Copenhagen till yesterday)

Take a leaf from the hospitality industry. Allocate star classification like hotels and restaurants to each school. Call them as five-star school, four-star school or A-grade school and B-grade school. Like the municipality, dole out permission to open restaurants in each our suburb, every locality of our metropolis must have schools of all ranks and grades.

Then announce that no student will go to a school whose residential postal code is not matching with the postal code of the school. I know there are already some schools like Jamnabai Narsee School in Juhu which do not distribute application forms to aspiring students who don’t stay in same postal code jurisdiction of Juhu.

It is because at least 3,000 sedans with a minimum of 1.8 litre engine to a maximum of 2.5 litre engine converge during the beginning and end of the school. These kids get down from their air-conditioned three-box cars and enter into a smoke chimney, emanated from these very vehicles. This is just one side of the story. The other side of the story is that a Bandra-bred kid going to Colaba everyday through the sea link and a Colaba-born kid driving down to an international school in Bandra. If the city bosses want they can easily ensure that students who live in Bandra study in the same place and similarly with every suburb.

Like the blueprint of the Bandra Worli sea link, this plan too is ambitious and full of mind numbing problems but once in place, we’ll love ourselves for it and show to the world that we indeed care for our future generations. Children should cycle to school, walk, run, or perhaps glide on rollerskates. At 6 am in the morning, roads in Mumbai deserve happy children, not belching school buses.