Students and parents in Bihar are in a difficult situation as the NCERT books have gone out of shelves from the local book stores. There is a scarcity of NCERT books in the city. Every day they are making rounds of the book stores, but are returning disappointed only with an assurance by the retailers for availability of books next week. The new academic session of the schools of the capital city has commenced from the first week of April.
This crisis of original NCERT textbooks is definitely not a new issue students are encountering. Kanak Sharma, TGT teacher of Baldwin Academy said that every year the shortage of books crops up as they are not supplied in proportion to the demands. Punishing the students for not bringing books is not the solution as the NCERT books are currently unavailable in the market.
There is a serious shortage of Mathematics and Science books of class 6th, 7th and 8th. Despite placing continuous order to maintain stock, there is no guarantee of availability of all the books of each class because supply is done as per NCERT inventory. After placing an order it is not assured that delivery will be done on time as said by M K Sinha, Manager of Gyan Ganga bookshop located at Boring Road.