Schools are where the future of a society is shaped. The quality of schools in a state or region determines the prospects of the future generation of that society or region to a large extent. This is precisely one of the reasons why education has been made a state responsibility in most countries of the world. In Manipur, the state's role however is lamentable. Despite huge allocations in the budget to meet the cost of imparting education to the youth of the state, the majority have today opted for the private schools out of compulsion arising out of the dysfunctional state educational set up. It is pertinent to question here as to why the private institutions, with much less remuneration to teachers are able to draw more students and deliver better quality of education while the state education department fails to succeed despite its huge resources amounting perhaps to ten times the resources at the disposal of the all private schools taken together.

It is time the government takes stock of the huge expenditure outgo on account of education and start pulling up non performing teachers on its rolls. One credible way forward could be to engage a reputed firm to audit the education department to come up with the number of schools actually built as per sanction, the number of teachers who are at their place of posting, the number of furniture sanctioned and actually found in the listed schools, the number of students actually getting education from the numerous schools against the number claimed on paper by the school authorities, etc.

The District Council schools are known to be the worst as far as the gap between projections on paper and actual reality is concerned. It is the height of mis-governance for new recruits under the District Council School system to find that no school building exists for them to join their posts, that the head master of the school lives in the town, which could be as far as 70 kilometers away from the village of his headmastership, that he accepts the joining letters in his residence, that the new recruits are told to meet the village chief to find a suitable replacement to "not teach in their place' at a cost and that the entire education system functions as a drain to draw the public funds into private, unaccountable "teachers and head masters" who don't teach and "supervise".

There is no longer any secrecy on posts of teachers being availed at a cost. Successes in the recruitments
are openly dependent on having the right channels to pay the "price" for the job. Totally meritorious few who
featured in the list of successful candidates are but inconvenient accommodations to camouflage the widespread corruption in the entire process.

What is at stake are entire generations of students who will remain deprived of the education they deserve
because their parents could not afford the costly private schools. Parents purchasing teaching jobs for their children have to reflect on the kind of example they are setting, candidates who got the jobs through connections and money-power need to reflect, officials and Ministers who indulge in corruption need to
reflect, as also their children, as to where these practices are going to lead us to in the future. Change brings
along change in fortunes as well, and change is unstoppable.

What if tomorrow their children or grand children are in need of affordable education dispensed through the state department of education or the council schools and they are not functional? And what would that child think of them if they knew their parents or grandparents had a role to play in killing the very system they now need? Would they thank them for building their future?