Kashmir Schools Turn Textbooks into Revenue: A Lucrative Scheme?
How Kashmir’s Schools Turn Textbooks into Cash Machines
In Kashmir, a silent financial storm is brewing, threatening the dreams and wallets of parents seeking quality education for their children. The battleground is the sprawling Rs 1,000 crore textbook industry, where private schools have perfected the art of systematic exploitation.
As students approach their result season, parents find themselves trapped in a relentless cycle of financial extortion, orchestrated by a complex nexus between private schools and publishers. The mechanism is brutally simple yet devastatingly effective.
This year, private schools have introduced a cunning strategy of prescribing textbooks from obscure foreign universities, brazenly violating the Directorate of School Education Kashmir’s explicit directive to use J&K Board textbooks. The motivation is nakedly transparent: making quick, unaccountable money.
“In the name of quality textbooks, parents are being looted,” says Shaista, her voice trembling with a mixture of frustration and helplessness. The numbers are shocking. A single textbook for a nursery student now commands a price tag of Rs 700, with no regulatory body brave or empowered enough to challenge this extortion.
An insider, speaking on condition of anonymity, revealed the intricate mechanics of this financial manipulation. “If a book is priced at Rs 700, the school pockets a minimum 50 percent commission—that’s Rs 350 of pure, unadulterated profit,” the source explained, painting a picture of calculated financial predation.
The strategy is cunningly comprehensive. Schools deliberately change textbooks annually, ensuring that students cannot use second-hand books from friends or relatives. This manufactured obsolescence creates a perpetual demand, forcing parents into a never-ending cycle of purchasing.
The most damning question remains unanswered: If these textbooks are truly of exceptional quality, why aren’t they prescribed in government schools? The silence is as telling as the exploitation is brazen.
More alarming is the complete absence of oversight. In this unregulated marketplace, there exists no authority in the Union Territory capable or willing to challenge these predatory pricing strategies. Parents are left defenseless, their financial vulnerability ruthlessly exposed and exploited. “It is an open loot going on, and this year the government is not even interfering,” laments another parent, encapsulating the systemic abandonment of educational integrity.
This isn’t merely about textbooks. It’s a stark illustration of how educational institutions can transform into profit-making machines, where learning becomes secondary to financial gain, and the aspirations of Kashmir’s children are traded for corporate margins.
As the result season approaches, parents hold their breath—not in anticipation of their children’s academic achievements, but in dread of the next financial blow awaiting them. The textbook racket continues, unchecked and unashamed, a testament to a system that has lost sight of its fundamental purpose: education.
