Shoma Kashyap, 13, loves coming to school on Saturdays, partly because she doesn't have to lug her heavy school bag.
No-bag days were introduced in May to help lighten the load -- literally -- for primary and junior high school students in Uttar Pradesh state. They are part of a series of reforms intended to make education more child-friendly.
Saturday is now the favourite day of the week for Shoma, a junior high school student in Ghodi, a village in Greater Noida east of Delhi. Book learning and school bags give way to a host of extracurricular activities.
On Saturdays, Shoma and her classmates perform plays, play badminton or khokho (a popular tag sport), do yoga and clay modelling, hold debates on current affairs, or go out into the village to talk to people about cleanliness and civic awareness.
Other activities include puppet shows, drawing and painting, first aid and hygiene training, and cultural activities. Some schools stage skits on women's education and empowerment, which help make girls aware about "good" and "bad" touching.
"There is about a 20% increase in attendance on Saturdays since no-bag day was introduced," said Hemendra Singh, the block education officer in Dadri, which administers 165 schools including the one in Ghodi. The state government has prescribed no specific curriculum for Saturdays, only general guidelines on activities that local offices can adapt to community needs.
The state government undertook the reforms after studying the recommendations of a committee originally set up in 1993, and a subsequent National Curriculum Framework (NCF) designed in 2005 for NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) schools.
The two groups had observed that learning in schools had become a source of burden and stress on children and their parents. They had advised against rote learning and said that primacy should be given to children's experience, their voices and participation and study in their mother tongue instead of English.
Dinesh Sharma, the Uttar Pradesh education minister, said the idea behind no-bag Saturdays was to make the school experience stress-free. The sheer load of books on children stunted their physical and cerebral growth, he said.
"We have devised a four-line mantra: quality education, no copying, happy children and stress-free education," he told Asia Focus. "We have only introduced no-bag days on Saturdays in selected government schools on a voluntary basis. If it succeeds we will extend it to all schools in the state."
In Rajasthan state, every second Saturdays is a no-bag day. Maharashtra and Karnataka states have similar programmes. The Delhi state government, meanwhile, claims to have reduced the overall load on schoolchildren by 25% and initiated "happiness classes" in certain schools.
Last month, the Union Ministry of Human Resource and Development (HRD) announced recommended maximum weights of bags for children and did away with homework for class 1 and class 2 students. School bags for students in classes 1 and 2 should not exceed 1.5 kilogrammes, it said. Limits increase with age, to a maximum of 5kg for a class 10 student.
On homework, the ministry said: "Schools should not prescribe any other subjects except language and mathematics for classes 1 and 2 and language, EVS (environment science) and mathematics for classes 3 to 5 students as prescribed by the NCERT."
Not all educators are impressed by the changes. No-bag Saturdays are merely "symptomatic relief", said Krishna Kumar, a former NCERT head who took part in the landmark studies of 1993 and 2005.
The real burden, in his view, is the burden of incomprehension, and that requires reforms in school curriculum and training of teachers, which is still poor.
"In the United States, textbooks are bought by schools. The textbooks are kept in schools, even in China. All the work needs to be done in school. In Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan, curriculum reforms have not been taken up," he said.
Professor Praveen Sinclair, another former NCERT director, noted the sorry state of government schools in Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and other states and blamed it on an overemphasis on English.
"In Chhattisgarh, teachers are not coming to schools. In Maharashtra, schools are closing down. A commercial compulsion that all jobs require English is being played out," she said.
More than the physical comfort, students are in need of psychological comfort in her view. She cited the success of central schools that mainly cater to employees of the central government, and said parents and local government bodies should scrutinise their local schools more closely.
Janaki Rajan, a professor with the Institute of Advanced Studies at Delhi-based Jamia Millia Islamia University, ridiculed the decision on school bag weights. She also questioned why it was being made by the HRD ministry and not the health ministry.
"What is the basis? Where National Health and Family Welfare records state that 72% of children are underweight, undernourished, stunted -- girls more than boys -- what is the exact number of kilogrammes these slender backs can handle? How were these … standards arrived at? All schools have to do is provide lockers to each child. Then they only carry what they need each day," she said.
Ms Rajan went on to criticise the HRD ministry's attempt to lighten the learning load as well.
"This is a theatre of the absurd if it is not tragic. The ministry says that now six- and seven-year-olds will only learn language (which they already know orally) and mathematics (a highly abstract concept)," she told Asia Focus. "They will not have space to ask questions that come naturally in their cognitive sphere, like why is our house so small, and these houses are so big? Who lives there? Why?
"Or, we cultivate so much food, then why are we hungry? Or, why are we coughing so much? Why is my sister crying so much and not talking? What happened to her?
"The burden of textbooks as dense materials of incomprehension has not been understood since the committee of 1993. So now we are condemned to speak of the physical load of school bags."
"Curriculum is an organic whole. To visualise 'cutting' it in this manner is to lobotomise knowledge. In recent years there has been a clear ascendancy of philistinism, contempt for knowledge among policymakers in India that does not augur well for building a knowledge society," she added.
