Photo Courtesy: ukhrultimes
Gangtok: Northeast India faces an education crisis. The latest UDISE+ 2024-25 report from the Union Ministry of Education exposes a massive gap between paper statistics and school reality. While the region hosts 90,677 schools for 1.06 million students, fundamental infrastructure remains broken.
Thousands of schools operate without reliable power. Over 31,000 schools lack electricity, and another 9,000 have connections that simply do not work. Digital tools are just as scarce. Less than two percent of all schools have digital libraries.
Sanitation is failing, too. Nearly 10,000 girls' toilets across the region are unusable. Assam, the regional hub, faces the heaviest burden with hundreds of non-functional facilities. Students with disabilities are largely forgotten. Only 19 percent of schools provide specialized toilets for these children. Access remains a dream for many.
Teacher distribution creates further headaches. Many states prioritize secondary education while neglecting foundational stages. In Assam, nearly half of all teachers work at the secondary level. Manipur and Tripura report similar patterns. This leaves early childhood development understaffed and undersupported.
Some gains exist. Drinking water access is high, with nearly all schools reporting functional supplies. Playgrounds and reading corners are common. Still, the underlying systems are failing. The report notes, "The presence of nearly 5.75 lakh teachers serving over one crore students demonstrates commitment to staffing, but the widespread infrastructure dysfunction undermines the learning environment these teachers work to create."
The region needs better maintenance. It needs internet connectivity. It needs functional equipment. Without these fixes, millions of students remain stuck in classrooms where basic resources simply do not work.
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