If you are a government schoolteacher in a Palamau village and want your biometric attendance recorded, better be nimble at climbing trees.
The Raghubar Das government’s digital dream needs a leg up on a palash tree on the campus of an upgraded plus two school in Sohree Khas village in Satbarwa block, 41km from Daltonganj.
Since September 25, when Palamau district administration gave the co-educational school with 800 students a tablet for biometric attendance, such tree-climbing gymnastics for four teachers and two para-teachers became an alarming reality after it was discovered the 2G network only “catches” on a particular branch.
If a teacher wants his biometric attendance recorded, he climbs the palash tree with the tablet and waits on the branch for internet connectivity to appear. When it does, he presses his thumb for scanning. On rare times the thumb scan succeeds, in most cases the screen blinks “scan failed”. Then, it’s the next teacher’s turn.
“Internet connectivity is dismal at Sohree Khas. It doesn’t come inside our two-storied school building. On one branch of the palash tree, it blinks and disappears. We keep waiting for internet. This tree-climbing business wastes a lot of time. Many times we can’t catch the Internet. We keep the old attendance register as a back-up,” said science teacher Arpan Kumar Gupta.
He said signal from tower was bad and the 2G SIM made it worse. “We were overjoyed to get the tablet, but now it’s a liability. On days we do get the Internet, we’re happy.”
Gupta could be forgiven for making the internet sound like an elusive animal. Climbing the tree is not easy for middle-aged men, especially on rainy days.
Palamau DC Shantanu Kumar Agrahari thanked The Telegraph for making him aware of teachers’ difficulties. “We will check if the existing telecom tower at Satbarwa is working properly. We will see if SIM portability of the tablet enhances Internet connectivity. If so, it will be done.”
Agrahari pointed out that in a rebel-hit district like Palamau, the home department had asked them to identify sites for towers for connectivity. But, in any rebel-hit district, telecom towers are a double-edged sword. Connectivity helps police and rebels. Also, towers are easy target for rebels.
The Palamau school is not alone in “catching” connectivity. In Garhwa’s Bhandarya, a Christian graveyard which gives good connectivity at specific times, sees people in droves with phones.
Gupta added their school, 15km from Satbarwa block headquarters, had no road, just a trodden path as treacherous as the Internet”.
