Political unrest and its impact on students

Some weeks ago, I was waiting for my school bus to pick me up. Instead my friend called up informing me that school had been closed due to a bandh in the city. At first it was exciting; no school, so no lessons or homework. But as the number of times of school being closed due to bandhs became more frequent, we started seeing it affect us too. Lessons were not being completed and the year was passing by. Examinations got postponed, holidays cut short, we were working Saturdays too to compensate for the classes lost and so on.This was happening quite often in the past few months due to the Telangana agitation. These bandhs were troubling hapless citizens of Hyderabad, including us students of the twin cities.Transport bandhs, road blocks, rail rokos and so on have created untold miseries to all of us living here. Daily wage workers were also affected quite severely as factories were shut, transport turned expensive, schools were closed and valuable manpower was lost, not to mention the four-hour power cuts that happened for months. We can still feel the after-effects with the power cuts still happening. This is a huge loss not only to our state but also to our country, especially in terms of man power and revenue.We have lost a lot of school days and so our syllabus is incomplete. Despite having special classes and classes on Saturdays, they are not enough to make up for the loss. Thus, while initially we felt happy about school not functioning, we had to remember that we would be suffering for it later.While I understand protesting is a democratic right of an individual, destructive protests aren’t. Causing inconvenience and bringing the state to a standstill is definitely not democratic.It would be best if all political parties and fellow students who were part of the protests acknowledge that and allow the rest of us students to study without interruptions. Our ultimate goal is to focus on building a bright future for our country.Meenakshi Menon is a Class VIII student at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's Public school