Listen to this article:

There is a particular kind of admission a government makes when it decides that the problem is not the broken toilet, but the camera that photographed it. Since the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) launched its second campaign, School Thik Karo, on Independence Day, it has encountered resistance of strikingly different kinds across Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled states. In West Bengal, a CJP volunteer’s school inspection was followed by a violent attack on his family in which his father died; in Rajasthan, CJP workers faced confrontation during inspections before the government moved to restrict outsiders from entering schools and recording what they found; and in Maharashtra, where the campaign began, its founder Abhijeet Dipke was himself booked after inspecting a government school in Latur.

The circumstances differ, and the allegations in the Bengal and Maharashtra cases remain matters for investigation. But the pattern is difficult to ignore: when citizens begin looking closely at government schools – and, crucially, recording what they see – the political system has repeatedly found reasons to object to the inspection itself.

The pattern matters more than any individual incident. School Thik Karo asks citizens to enter government schools, document their condition and make what they find publicly visible. Within days, the campaign had encountered accusations of politicisation, alleged political pressure, physical confrontation and administrative restrictions on access and recording. The governments involved may have different explanations for each episode, and those explanations should be tested on their facts. But they share a common feature: the campaign is not merely asking governments to repair schools; it is making the condition of those schools visible. And visibility becomes politically uncomfortable when the evidence is worse than the official narrative.

Rajasthan draws the line around the camera

Rajasthan made that resistance explicit on August 16. Hours after the CJP announced that it would extend School Thik Karo across the state – inspecting government schools in Jaipur, Ajmer, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Kota, Barmer and several other districts – the Directorate of Secondary Education issued a circular restricting access to government schools. Outsiders may not enter without prior permission from the principal or head of the institution, while photography, videography, interviews, audio recording and live streaming involving students, teachers or school activities require prior written permission.

Unauthorised entry or recording can trigger police action and, depending on the circumstances, proceedings under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the POCSO Act, the Juvenile Justice Act and the Information Technology Act. The department justified the restrictions by invoking in loco parentis, Article 21’s protection of life, dignity and privacy, and National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) school-safety guidelines.

The timing deserves attention. The circular was issued on a Sunday evening, within hours of a campaign announcing its intention to document school infrastructure across the state. It also came against a longer history of governments responding to embarrassing images of public schools by restricting the ability to produce or circulate them. In September 2022, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) imposed restrictions after Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislators live-streamed visits to dilapidated municipal schools; in Faridabad, an education officer subsequently prohibited the making of “reels” on school campuses after videos of school conditions circulated online. The circumstances are not identical, but the underlying instinct is. When evidence of institutional failure becomes politically damaging, the temptation is to regulate its visibility rather than remedy the failure itself.

That is what makes Rajasthan significant. The circular may be defended in the language of child protection, privacy and institutional discipline – and those are legitimate interests. But it also has the practical effect of placing the production of evidence about publicly funded schools under the control of the very authorities whose performance is being examined. A broken toilet can be repaired. A video of the........

© The Wire