Some days back there were multiple reports from Telangana’s Warangal district about a young child collapsing on the school’s stairs due to the weight of her heavy bag. And, because of a lack of timely attention and delay in proper medical assistance, she died.

This is not the first time that such an incident has been reported in India. Last year, there was a case where a school student fell off from the balcony. She had lost her balance due to a shift in her centre of gravity due to the heavy weight of her school bag. These are incidents which ought to shake the conscience of our nation! But alas, that doesn’t happen easily in our country.

These kinds of reports are perfectly relatable to people of my generation because when I was a junior school kid in a village in Kerala’s Palghat district, our school bags used to weigh as much on a daily basis.

Moreover, some teachers used to achieve a morbid pleasure out of sternly instructing school kids to carry more and more books even if they weren’t required for any lessons on that particular day. The pure apathy of the teachers and school administrations in this regard is pitiable and sickening in most parts of rural India. To be fair, the top schools in bigger cities of India are a bit more sympathetic and civilised in this regard.

When the digital age is taking school and university education to a different level by introducing smart classrooms, online courses, computer-based homework and assignments using modern technology, there are still numerous schools in rural India which are reluctant to change their medieval methods of teaching and punishing young kids.

Recent studies show that the psychological trauma induced from repeated bullying and corporal punishments from teachers have a lasting negative psychological effect on school-going kids. After all, it is widely accepted in Social Sciences today that a disturbed childhood (due to multiple social factors) is one of the most pivotal causes of severe mental health challenges in later life.

Fortunately, in the Indian education system, there are always few extremely kind and empathetic teachers in every school to balance the menace of some of the notorious and psychopathic ones in the same school.

One does not need to know rocket science to understand that some of these school children, who suffered severe long-term health conditions or fatal injuries, would have carried a lot of extra load in their school bags just because of their respective teachers’ archaic attitudes and stern instructions. It is in this respect that top management in schools, as well as officials dealing with education, need to sit together to come up with ways to prevent such deplorable incidents from happening in the future.

Few schools are already taking positive steps in this regard. A responsible intervention from the education officials as well as respective district administrations can easily solve this problem in any state or district by making some minimal changes to the school routine and teaching methods.

In a country like ours which has huge intellectual potential and energy, it is a real shame that much of the students’ energy gets wasted in carrying tonnes of pages on their shoulders rather than channelling this productive energy in creative pursuits, sports or hobbies. Today, students in the developed nations carry their notebooks and textbooks on a 10 gram USB stick, while in our country, super heavy school bags are leading to deaths of healthy young kids. It is high time we seriously think and do something about this.