The mounting prices of textbooks in private schools in Kashmir are a major hassle for the parents and students, while the government holds clear norms regarding the parameter of prices for educational material, and private schools negate these norms, thereby adding to the burden on the families.
Parents have been raising alarms about increasing prices of books for a while now. Some say it may have tripled or quadrupled and is still counting.
The most weighed down are middle- and lower-class families, whose members are still struggling to keep their health intact under crushing inflation and rising costs of living in an unsure economy. When education fails to meet the qualification of a basic right, it often becomes a financial burden to those already struggling economically.
There are well laid-out set of laws by the Jammu and Kashmir government that should be followed without exception against all forms of exploitation in textbook pricing. It stipulates that textbooks are to be sold at reasonable rates, while any extra cost levied by private schools or any associated dealer is illegal.
However, the private schools of the region pretend to ignore such policies and take arbitrary advantages of selling textbooks by referring to them as ‘specialized’ or ‘in-house’, which costs much higher than normal.
The dispute that schools normally give is that these are the types of books meant for the certain curriculum of the institution or to improve the quality of education. Well, this argument cannot hold any critical scrutiny.
Most of these books are not much different from normal public schools, and usually, only the distinguishing factor is the price tag on the book. It is quite clear that here the motive for charging extra prices is nothing other than profit maximization and has least concern for improving the quality of education.
The effects of increased cost of textbooks are not just limited to financial-denial effects. Quite often, students from low-income families cannot afford such books while also having to maintain other primary things. That further does not create an equal situation in school as those who cannot purchase overpriced stuff cannot compete on terms with richer students for the same resource.
Government should immediately act on it. Strict accountability should be imposed on private schools for any violations and penalties should apply to vendors participating in the act of overpricing books
