By Bharat Dogra
A significant number of residents of Bhaggupurva hamlet in Nagnedi panchayat (Banda district) of Uttar Pradesh) migrate regularly from the village as they cannot earn their subsistence in the village. While some of them leave with their children, others leave their small children with their grandparents.
As these elderly persons can barely look after their own needs, these children get neglected. They do not go to school and roam around aimlessly. Tragedy struck twice recently as three such children of this hamlet were drowned, two in a pond and one in a canal. This caused widespread distress in the hamlet.
Urmila, a deeply sensitive dalit woman of this village was already involved with a voluntary organization Vidya Dham Samiti (VDS). With its help she decided to open an informal school in which these children could come get some education and care.
For over a year now she has been teaching these children for about two hours per day. Depending on the migration cycle, the number of children who attend this school can range from 20 to 35. The school hours were 4 to 6 earlier but with the onset of winter have been changed from to 3 to 5.
Urmila is one of the very few women here who is a graduate. She divides children according to age group and teaches them the basics of English, Hindi and Math. Saturday being sports day is eagerly awaited. Keeping in view the recent tragedies, children are alerted regarding safety precautions. They also learn about good health and hygiene.
Urmila has not yet been able to arrange a room or properly covered place for her small school, so rainy days sometimes become off days while occasionally someone provides a covered place. She hopes that some more durable solution can be found soon.
Meanwhile Urmila has already succeeded in integrating some of her students in the mainstream school, although problems caused by the frequent migration of their parents will persist.
Urmila gets a lot of affection from children, as is evident from the fact that those going to the mainstream school still insist on coming to her school too. Urmila does not believe in punishing children. When these children or their grandparents experience any serious health or other problems, Urmila tries to arrange some help from neighbours, or from VDS and its sister organization Chingari.
Several such schools have been started by VDS without having any project support for this by raising small donations. These can play a particularly important in villages where migration levels are high, or where there are very high levels of poverty and the nearest school is some distance away and the path is not safe. Such informal schools may not be adequate for meeting educational needs, but these fulfil an important need. To explore various options, in one such school nutrition is also provided, despite the difficulties faced in this due to the non-availability of any project funds.
For the school in Missouri village a beautiful small bamboo room has been created near a lotus pond for the children who assemble here for about two hours every day for education. Here some nutrition is also provided on daily basis. Jitendra, the teacher in this school, is a talented youth of this village. One of his arms was crushed in an accident, but several people say that this accident was deliberately caused by a dabang (ruthless person) of the village who was angry with Jitendra for being assertive. Jitendra remains very quiet but his mother was very agitated when I spoke to her. Jitendra is very committed to teaching children, even though only a small honorarium could be arranged for him. Coming to meetings and inter-acting with many people has given him a new confidence and he has also re-joined his own education along with teaching children.
Even at a very small scale, such efforts have given heart-warming results which testify to the eagerness of children themselves to have at least some access to education. One hopes that with more support becoming available, these efforts will be able to expand and improve in the near future.
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The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include "Protecting Earth for Children", "Man over Machine" and "A Day in 2071"
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