It was a cruel metamorphosis by which the kitchen meant to cook nutritious food for poor school children in Tamil Nadu’s temple town of Kumbakonam, turned into the vehicle of death for at least 90 of them. Legend has it that Kumbakonam owes its origins to the kumbh — the primordial pot of creation, containing the nectar of life — that had been carried to the place from Lord Shiva’s Himalayan abode by a great flood. Ironically, this mythology appears to have been replayed in the reverse — regressing from life to death as it were — in the devastating fire that claimed the lives of little children even as their teachers, allegedly, turned the other way and fled.

Whatever the findings of the inquiry commission instituted by the J. Jayalalithaa regime on July 19, this tragedy has the makings of a “pedagogic disaster”. Only a few weeks back, while explaining the rationale for the government’s new two per cent cess on all Central taxes, P. Chidambaram had said, “If primary education and the nutritious cooked meal scheme can work hand in hand, I believe there will be a new dawn for the poor children of India.”

The larger goals are well set and clear. But do schools have the infrastructure to deliver these laudable schemes? If primary classes for children and nutritious noon meal centres are to be held under the same thatched roof, and that too in such close proximity, as commonly found in many of the rural schools in Tamil Nadu, even the smallest mistakes can spell disaster. The Kumbakonam tragedy is a shocking example of this, even though in this case there were other factors.

It was on July 1, 1982, under the regime of the actor-turned-politician, M.G. Ramachandran, that the NNMC scheme was expanded in a big way in the state. A far-sighted project which later even won the praise of the World Bank, its objective was to provide a nutritious meal for school children studying in government and government-aided schools from class I to X.

Instituted to combat malnutrition among poor rural children, the scheme was subsequently expanded to cover poor urban children. This also acted as an incentive for improving enrolment and reducing drop-outs in schools. But the mishap poignantly shows that all these aims can get derailed in no time. Notwithstanding the crores of rupees in funds released by the state government every year for repairs to be carried out at the noon meal centres, the event clearly shows the callousness of government-run schools and the privately managed, state-aided schools. The school management’s political affiliations and clout, their alleged collusion with education department officials to string in funds from Central government schemes like the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, their luring of lower middle class and the poor parents with the promise of an “affordable English medium education” for their wards — all these factors have allowed state-aided schools to flourish in Tamil Nadu, sans any accountability.

For the last three years, no education department official had come to this ill-fated school on the narrow Kasiraman street in Kumbakonam for any worthwhile inspection. This is a “veritable deathtrap”, cried Janakiraman, a local. There are also allegations that money must have changed hands when it was time to renew the licence of the school. A cramped building, and dingy, narrow stairways added to the children’s woes. But in the nearby Natham village, which lost 13 children in the fire, parents, mostly daily workers, had gone for the school as it charged a low fee of Rs 50 per month. The school’s providing a pick-up van service for Rs 30 per month per student was another incentive, as the village had no proper road for regular public transport. Yet it was only after the deaths that the Jayalalithaa government sat up to take notice of all that was plainly visible.

For now, the government has ordered the dismantling of all thatched-roofed structures in schools and their adjoining noon-meal centres. Jayalalithaa demands that such roofs of schools be replaced by non-flammable materials by the end of July. Politicians like S. Ramadoss of the Pattali Makkal Katchi believe the time-limit is too unrealistic to effect a real change. Jayalalithaa has also ordered replacing the thatched roofs over noon meal kitchen sheds immediately, as the “only way to prevent the possibility of fire spreading” to the main school buildings.

Strangely, till the Kumbakonam school tragedy, there was no provision for obtaining any licence or “no objection certificate” by schools from the state fire and rescue services authorities. The school in Kumbakonam was located in a congested area and resembled two vertically-placed matchboxes conjoined by an badly-ventilated, poorly illumined passageway. As in this case, most schools have no emergency exits. Tamil Nadu has now made the fire authorities’ licence mandatory for all schools, besides the existing structural stability certificate from the public works department.

More appalling than the lack of basic infrastructure and safety measures in schools has been the attitude of the teachers. “We only send our children to schools to learn; did we know it will be a death pit?” fumed a poster by concerned citizens and parents in Kumbakonam town soon after the tragedy. It hit out at the teachers for having failed to come to the rescue of the children engulfed by the fire.

“They (teachers) could have at least tried to push out five children at a time and the toll would have been much lower”, said the relative of a shell-shocked mother who lost two of her daughters in the flames. Instead, “the teachers just disappeared from the scene”, was the almost unanimous complaint of local residents and eyewitnesses. Some of the teachers, who have now become part of a sensitive investigation, have refuted the allegation, saying that they did their part.

Jayalalithaa also wants teachers in the state to be put through a crash training course on how to handle any fire emergency in schools. This is an implicit acknowledgement of the local people’s sentiments vis-a-vis the role of the teachers in this tragedy. In sum, all this is a grim reminder that it takes a tragedy of immense proportions for governments to set the ball of the much-needed school reforms rolling, lest they have to face yet another disaster.