New NCERT books at a store in Ranchi. Picture by Prashant Mitra

Ranchi, Sept. 21: While the government is busy organising MoU festivals and in planning to turn Jamshedpur into Shanghai, it appears to have failed to execute a relatively simpler exercise of supplying NCERT textbooks to school students in the state.

Supply of NCERT textbooks has been a sore point ever since the state government decided in 2002 to switch over to the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) syllabi. The government, committed to supply free textbooks to students from class I to VIII, has consistently failed to do so.

It had the option of buying the books directly from NCERT. But it chose instead to acquire the copyright from NCERT. Thereafter, it gave the responsibility of publishing the books to Jharkhand Education Project and one ?National Printers? barely two months ago. The final agreement between NCERT and the state government on ?commissions?, too, is yet to be worked out.

Director, Secondary Education, Himani Pandey, had an interesting take though. She said on Wednesday that there was no crisis or shortage of textbooks in the state. But in the next breath she admitted that the agreements with NCERT and the printers are ?yet to be finalised?.

Says Surendra Arora, a former NCERT dealer, ?students now come and enquire if photocopies of the textbooks are available.? Principal of Guru Nanak School, C. Terence, informs, ?Pirated books are available at two-and-a-half times, say Rs 80, the price of an original NCERT textbook which might cost Rs 30. If students photocopy the entire book, the copying cost is even higher and might cost Rs 200 per book.?

Photocopying, point out both teachers and principals, takes time and several months are wasted before every student in every section got hold of the photocopies.

As a result, most schools have failed to complete their syllabi though it is already time to hold the pre-Board test in most schools.

Rajesh Sharma, another prominent bookseller, owner of Subodh Granthalay, claimed, however, that the first lot of books printed by National Publishers were received at his outlet a week ago. But the publishers, he complained, had printed only 10,000 copies of each book, which is inadequate to meet the demand.

It would cost the dealers Rs 8 lakhs to transport all the 200 approved textbooks published by the NCERT from Delhi, that is if they are available, points out Onkarnath Rai, secretary of the booksellers? association. Dealers, he said, simply do not have that kind of money.