Broken toilets, leaking roofs: Why India's 'cockroach' party wants to fix schools The poor state of government schools is the focus of a new campaign by India's Cockroach Janta Party (CJP). 4 hrs agoAsia

Broken toilets, leaking roofs: Why India's 'cockroach' party wants to fix schools.

Key points

• According to official data, 94, 000 administration schools have closed here between 2014-15 and 2024-25.
• The crumbling girls' primary school which he offered me a tour of upsets him as the 62-year-old studied here from 1968 to 1973.
• The administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi or his Bharatiya Janata Party have not commented on the campaign.
• Experts – and the Indian government's own National Education Policy (NEP) – have recommended 6% as the ideal mark for India.
• But this government-run primary school for girls in Faridabad, a district on the outskirts of the Indian capital Delhi, suffers from a host of challenges.

For context, the squat one-storey building has lately received a fresh coat of paint and looks respectable from a distance.

Notably, the road outside the school in Khedi Kalan village is dotted with shallow potholes filled with filthy water. Inside, local social worker Satpal Narwat points out the plaster falling from the ceiling.

"It looks new from the outside, but it's crumbling from inside. While four of the nine classrooms have additionally been abandoned as they are too unsafe for children, " he says, adding that in the rains, "the classrooms obtain flooded and children have no place to sit", four of its eight toilets are unusable and full of trash.

This is not an isolated case. Plenty of schools, especially in rural India, are starved of funding and in disrepair.

India spends only 4.1% of its GDP on education. While this meets Unesco's lower minimum threshold of 4%, a number of countries – including France, Germany, Australia, Brazil and the US – spend more than 5% of their GDP on education. Countries like Belgium and Sweden spend even more.

According to official data, 94, 000 administration schools have closed here between 2014-15 and 2024-25. A report by administration think-tank Niti Aayog states some were merged as part of efforts to streamline the system, but acknowledges that enrolment has fallen as demand for private schools has risen.

Meanwhile, the poor state of administration schools is the focus of a new campaign by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP). The online satirical movement created global headlines for its weeks-long protest in Delhi. It culminated in the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan last month.

In practice, the protests had erupted in May after NEET, India's biggest medical entrance exam, was cancelled after a question paper leak, forcing almost two million students to retake the test. More than 20 students died by suicide, with their families blaming the scandal.

Named #SchoolThikKaro (#FixTheSchool), the CJP's latest campaign is aimed at highlighting the crumbling infrastructure in administration schools and pressuring authorities into addressing it.

"Administration schools, especially in rural India, have been neglected for numerous plenty of decades now. So, children who grow up in villages don't have equal opportunities and they end up working in farms or as a daily wage labourer or construction workers, " CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke informed the BBC.

"It's only since they don't secure the same facilities and the same opportunities that children in major cities secure. And that is what we are trying to change by making schools better."

On Thursday, Dipke remarked he had visited more than 20 rural schools and had "not found even a single good school".

"There were no benches, no bathrooms, no drinking water, no facilities at all. Even animals would not be kept in such a place, " he remarked.

"What I saw was really heartbreaking. This is particularly similar to what I employed to see when I applied to visit my village during school summer vacation. And even after 20 years, nothing have changed there."

In recent days, Dipke and other CJP leaders have shared a number of videos – of leaking roofs, dirty toilets, children sitting on the floor and angry students – with their 26 million Instagram followers.

"We want to ensure that children obtain benches to sit on, good washrooms and clean drinking water. They should have smart classrooms with digital boards. That is when they will additionally feel that they are getting the same quality of education as those living in sizeable cities in the country, " Dipke noted.

Notably, the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi or his Bharatiya Janata Party have not commented on the campaign. The BBC has additionally contacted India's education ministry for a response.

Meanwhile, the CJP's protest in Delhi and the campaign to fix schools appear to have emboldened students throughout India and opened floodgates of complaints and set off localised mutinies against an administration numerous accuse of being apathetic.

Armed with mobile phones, school students have been shooting and posting videos on social media – some of which have gone viral and prompted authorities to act.

After one video of schoolgirls in Raigad, Maharashtra, mocking the condition of the road leading to their school went viral, the local authorities repaired it.

While a third demonstrated schoolgirls asking an official whether he would send his own children to a school in such poor condition, in Uttar Pradesh, another video indicated students running into the district magistrate's office demanding a road to their school.

At Delhi's Jantar Mantar, where the CJP held its earlier protest, the group demanded Pradhan's resignation as well as an overhaul of India's education system with greater accountability.

Journalist and author Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay notes "by the end of their protest, it was clear that it wasn't just about one exam or one minister's resignation".

"People there were talking about the state of schools and everything that's wrong with them."

Mukhopadhyay notes the #FixTheSchool campaign is an obvious next step and "the way people have contributed with videos, pointing out flaws in school infrastructure, is evidence that the movement is gaining ground".

"It can't be Jantar Mantar 2.0 as it will be much slower and a long-lasting movement. But the CJP will obtain a lot of backing for the campaign since there's plenty to talk concerning that's wrong with the schools, " he adds.

One of the biggest challenges administration schools face is a lack of teachers and other staff, notes Chatar Singh, treasurer of the Primary Teachers' Association in Haryana state where Faridabad is located.

Singh is additionally the head teacher of the primary school in Atmadpur village. Its new building, funded by a private company's corporate social responsibility programme, and students' trophies create it one of the better-equipped schools in the area.

But as we approach the toilets near the school gate, a stench greets me. Singh notes the toilets have not been cleaned properly for the past two days as the part-time cleaner – appointed by the administration to come in for a couple of hours every morning – has been sick.

But dirty toilets are not his biggest difficulty – it is the lack of teachers, he states.

For the school's 910 children, there are 40 teachers. But on Wednesday when BBC visited the institution, 30 had been deployed to support with voters' list revision, four others were off sick, leaving only six teachers to manage the children.

"Teachers are hired to teach, but throughout India, administration deploys them to do a lot of non-teaching assignments. They are applied for election duty and to conduct Census. Most of my teachers have been on voters' list revision duty since July. It's affecting the quality of education, " he notes.

Asked why he thinks the administration schools are neglected, Singh states, "Do children of bureaucrats and MPs and politicians study in my school? No. They send their children to private schools since they can afford them."

Most students here are children of migrant factory labourers, he notes. "And a majority of them are from underprivileged castes and communities. Anyone who can afford sends their children to private school, " he adds.

His claim holds true throughout India. It is visible in the mushrooming of private schools in small towns and villages.

In Khedi Kalan when he was growing up, Narwat notes, there were only administration schools near him and he obtained his education there.

Meanwhile, the crumbling girls' primary school which he offered me a tour of upsets him as the 62-year-old studied here from 1968 to 1973.

For now, broken toilets, leaking roofs: Why India' s ' cockroach' party wants to fix schools remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.