Students affected by Manipur violence have been left with uncertainties about their academic future.
Fifteen-year-old Pushpa Karam fears she will not be able to perform well in the Class X examinations next year. Her home in the Torbung Bangla area in the Churachandpur district of Manipur has been gutted by the recent ethnic violence.
Karam is taking shelter at a relief camp in the Kunbi area of the neighbouring Bishnupur district along with 42 other school-going students and their families.
She has been forced to miss her Mathematics and English tuitions, as per a report by PTI.
“I fear I won't perform well in the Class X board examination next year, which might affect my dreams of enrolling in a good school in Imphal," Karam told PTI.
Karam is among around 4,000 school-going students who have been affected by the recent ethnic violence in Manipur. Out of these, around 1,000 have been rendered homeless in Churachandpur and affected areas of neighbouring Bishnupur district, while the remaining are from Imphal East district and Moreh town, officials said.
Students, parents anxious about future
While the students fear they might lose an academic year as they will not be able to return to their schools in the affected areas, their parents' immediate concern is to seek a permanent place to stay.
"My books, study materials and even all school documents were in my house, which was burnt. My father says we cannot return to Churachandpur anymore. I don't know where I will go to school," 15-year-old Anu Irom Chanu, a student at Don Bosco School in Churachandpur, said.
Seventeen-year-old Namoijam Tomba Singh from the Torbung Bangla area in Churachandpur said his chances of getting into a coveted course or job at the end of his school year have now been diminished.
"With my academic year in the doldrums as well as uncertainty over where we will live, I really don't know how I will prepare for various exams like NDA entrance, merchant navy, that I was planning to appear for," Singh, whose parents were daily wage earners, said.
Moirangthem Shyam of the People's Progressive Union, which organised the relief camp in Kunbi, said that the affected students must be enrolled in the nearest government school at the earliest so that their academic year is not lost.
At least 73 people were killed, 231 injured and 1,700 houses, including religious places, were burnt in the ethnic violence that rocked the Northeastern state recently, officials said.
