Suresh Rawat (15) still wakes at 6 am - he has never needed an alarm. Not because school is in session or a bell might echo through the hills, but because his routine - wake, wash, dress - is a habit rooted in pre-monsoon normalcy. Comb hair, button shirt, pack school bag. But he has nowhere to go. No teacher has checked its contents in over 60 days, after a bridge connecting his village in Uttarakhand to the local school was washed away in June.
Across flood-hit north India - Punjab, Himachal, Uttarakhand, Jammu, parts of UP and now Haryana - students have been missing school and college because waters won't allow them, teachers can't reach and buildings won't stand.
"The path to my school, 7 km from Kupda village in Uttarkashi, lay across that bridge," Suresh said. "On June 28, the Yamunotri highway link disappeared. Now I'll have to study a lot on my own to make up for lost classes." He despairs at the gap in front of him, with no sign of repair or even a temporary bridge - only the weight of an academic calendar slipping away.
Punjab ordered schools shut in late August until September 7 - a 12-day stretch overlapping with peak harvest, compounding family losses. Himachal staggered its orders through July and August, as repeated landslides cut off access to schools and staff housing.
In Jammu, schools were shut on Sept 1 and 2 after heavy rain warnings and flood risks. The order expanded the next day to Kashmir, where flood alerts followed the Chenab and Jhelum crossing danger marks. The Srinagar-Jammu highway stayed closed for days, severing supply routes and classroom routines alike.
The storm has erased not just structures - Himachal alone reported damage to 500 schools - but the scaffolding of education. In Mandi, where 300 schools were affected, functioning buildings became shelters. Teachers vanished from WhatsApp groups, not by choice but because they were stranded. Unit tests were pushed into vagueness, then abandoned. Online lessons were announced for Sept 1, but for most, the only thing that arrived was another rain alert.
Sunil Negi, who teaches in Kullu, tried to hold a class. "The power went within minutes. Then signal dropped. We stopped trying," he said. Leena Kapoor in Mandi was more blunt: "We've taught nothing new. Half the staff haven't returned. The school was a ration camp for two weeks."
In places where classrooms hadn't collapsed, access became the barrier. Rakesh Kumar, a govt teacher, described walking 5 km along a landslide-prone path just to reach his students. "The road was blocked, but we tried anyway. It's the kind of risk no one wants to take, but we do it because otherwise, the children lose everything."
The more remote the school, the worse the loss. In Bharmour, paths once curving through hills have been wiped out. "We used to carry the younger children on our shoulders," said Vikram Rana, a village elder. "Now even the elders can't reach them." Students relocated from landslide-prone areas are now simply unreachable.
Makeshift arrangements haven't always worked. A sudden lake formation behind the school in Syanachatti, Uttarakhand, forced 56 students out; 25 were sent to Bajri Primary, others to rented rooms. But 18 children were never relocated. "They've disappeared into a crevice in the system," a local education officer said. "And that widens every day."
No meaningful plan has followed. There's been no revision of the exam calendar, no guidance on syllabus cuts, and no plan for remediation. Authorities have floated ideas - weekend sessions, compressed holidays - but without any infra, internet or staff, those promises ring hollow.
The east hasn't been spared. In Assam's Majuli island, floodwaters returned for third time this season. Rashmi Das, 16, had just resumed classes when her school was converted into a shelter again. "They said we'd reopen soon. Then the water came back."
And beyond ridgelines of Ladakh, where Aug brought rainfall 930% above normal, teacher Jigmet Tundup continued to show up to a classroom half-submerged each morning. "We sweep water out," he said. "Then we begin. Sometimes with the alphabet."
(With inputs from Rohit Mullick in Kullu, Ashish Mishra in Uttarkashi, Yogesh Nagarkoti in Bageshwar, and Tanmayee Tyagi in Dehradun)
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