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It has been quite fascinating to study these huge municipal school complexes that we have in Mumbai. One of these complexes house more than one school. This means, one school name does not equal multiple school buildings. They’re perhaps housed on multiple floors. The schools interested me because my bus stand in Powai is in front of one and I see this school at Passpoli, Powai quite often. This forced me to look for school complexes in my locality.

These schools also have a powerful impact on their locality by the presence of a huge ground surrounding them. At the pace of development Mumbai is undergoing, these schools may very well be in danger. Reducing funding for these schools which leads to higher dropout and lower quality of education delivered may lead to Government re-think of the need for maintaining these structures at all.

Many of them are in a dilapidated condition. There are efforts by corporates and non-profits to work with these schools. Some of them are improving through such efforts but there is not enough good news about them in the media today.

As the affordability of schools is becoming a question today, I hope we save these municipal schools for long enough because we never know the day when we might have to send our children to these schools because no other school is affordable. The rising inequality in our society means that day may not be that far away.

Location: M/W Ward, Zone 5, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India