A class in candlelight at ND Rashtriya Vidyalaya after windows had to be shut to keep the rain away. Pictures by Gour Sharma

Sitarampur (Asansol), July 20: Such is the government’s eagerness to make Bengal computer literate that it wants a school, running without electricity for 44 years, to log in.

Around 260km from Calcutta, ND Rashtriya Vidyalaya has no clue what to do with the 10 computers and the printer, scanner, web camera and projector gathering dust in one of its rooms for more than three months.

The state, a national laggard in rural electrification, has granted the school Rs 1.55 lakh to buy furniture and dress up a room for its computer classes.

Mahesh Kumar, the teacher in charge of the co-education school, said: “We face great difficulty in running classes during monsoon and summer without power.”

What he did not say was that the government had played a cruel joke on around 1,800 students and their teachers.

“In summer, we sometimes have to shut the windows be- cause of the heat. But then we have to light candles, which makes it hotter. During monsoon, we have to shut the windows again and depend on candlelight. We don’t know what to do with the computers,” said Kumar.

The school had applied for power four decades ago and since then prodded about a dozen Burdwan inspectors of schools for it.

Prabir Kumar Patnaik, the man in the post now, made light of the school’s plight, saying: “We won’t be able to supply power. That is the power department’s job. Our responsibility was to reach the machines to the school as part of our computer education programme and we have done it.”

Bengal had lagged in introducing computers to schools.

Figures available with the Union government also reveal that the state has one of the lowest rates of rural household electrification.

Rupa Trivedi, a Class XII student of the Sitarampur school, travels 10km twice a week to learn computers at a private centre in Asansol town.

“We were surprised to see the computers arrive because we are more used to candlelight,” she said.

Santosh Rauth of Class XI said: “Smudging of ink on our exam papers is common because of sweaty hands.”

The school authorities hire a generator during the secondary and higher secondary exams, when students from other schools come to take their tests. Fans and lights, stacked in a room through the year, are put up before the exams.

For the school’s own tests, the generator cost of Rs 250 to Rs 300 a day is a bit too much, said Kumar.

Officials of the West Bengal State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd said a railway track that splits Sitarampur had delayed the electrification.

“There is electricity in the southern half of the village. But as cables had to be taken underneath the tracks, it was not possible without the railway’s permission,” an official said.

The permission only came last year.

The northern side of Sitarampur also has 400 families living without power.

The Asansol divisional engineer of the power distribution company, Chandra Sekhar Sengupta, promised power in northern Sitarampur by early 2009. “We have already ta- ken the cables underneath the tracks and a 100KV substation is under construction. We have also planted some electric posts in the area. But it is likely to take six to seven months more,” said Sengupta.

He accused the railways of delaying the project.

Additional divisional railway manager (Asansol) Din- esh Kumar said he couldn’t explain the delay because he “came here recently”.