This Article is From Sep 05, 2014

No Flat Screen TVs or Webcast, In PM Modi's Varanasi, Some Students Rely on Radios

No Flat Screen TVs or Webcast, In PM Modi's Varanasi, Some Students Rely on Radios

A teacher in a Varanasi school tries to set up a radio for PM Modi's speech

Varanasi: As Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Teachers' Day address was beamed live across the nation, in his own constituency Varanasi, thousands of schoolchildren tuned in the old-fashioned way - through radio.

Several schools in the rural areas of Varanasi, the holy town in Uttar Pradesh that voted PM Modi to Parliament in May, have hardly any facilities or resources to watch the speech live. Some of them barely even have classrooms or toilets.

Before the speech, children of one school in the Rohaniya area could be seen drying batteries for radios in the sun after they caught moisture from the rain. In another school, teachers rigged up radios for children to listen in.

There are no giant screen-TVs in these schools, so students relied on the caprices of the radio to hear the Prime Minister. Many are carrying mobile phones.

PM Modi made his Teachers' Day address at a Delhi auditorium packed with about 700 children. Many more linked in via satellite.

Over 18 lakh government and private schools in the country participated and students were asked to be present in class.

Many schools changed timings to ensure students could watch or hear the PM there.
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