Kids have to travel 20 kilometres to reach school in UP - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Poor children, who want good education but cannot afford it, pile up in traditional tongas (horse-drawn carts) and ride for about 20 kilometres to reach their schools in Lucknow. The children of Khanipur Village that falls in Lakhimpur Khiri area near Lucknow have to travel 20 kilometers, as there is no school in their village. Modern means of commutation are expensive and the most of the villagers are not rich. This has led them to opt for traditional tongas as a means of transportation that are both cheap and yet reliable. Twelve-year-old Gurulal Singh, who studies in fourth standard, said that they have to travel long distances, as there is no school on their village. "We go to the school in a tonga). We have to travel via the highway for a long distance as there is no school in our village," he added. Manjeet Singh, a student's father said that they cannot afford other means of transportation than a tonga. "We send our children to the school in a tonga as the other means of commuting are expensive and taking economics into consideration, we have opted for this means of transportation for our kids," he added. The present State government has launched several schemes and projects to spread education to the rural areas in an attempt to make education available to all. However, problems like scarcity of books and teachers have proved a major hindrance in realizing these goals. Although there has been an improvement in the student-teacher ratio in March 2009 to 53:1, against the 63:1 ratio of 2004, a lot still needs to be done to take the state forward on the path of literacy.