No toilets, teachers in village adjoining IIT Guwahati

IIT Guwahati students as teachers inside a primary school. (Source: Express photo by Samudra Gupta Kashyap)

It is in the heart of Guwahati, adjoining the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). But children of Latiya Bagicha, a village comprising of about 250 households just outside the eastern gate of IIT go to a school where there is only one teacher to teach pupils of as many as six classes. One toilet and two urinals that the school has don’t have doors, while the pupils have started dropping out too.

“We took up this programme called Pragati as an offshoot of Techniche, the annual techno-management festival of IIT Guwahati three months back, and selected two villages after a survey of seven villages adjoining our campus we found that the picture is very pathetic. In one school one of the two teachers hardly comes, while the other school has been running with a single teacher for over 10 years now,” said Sai Charan Thirandas, a member of the core team that runs the voluntary programme.

While the IIT students launched Pragati, their teaching programme, on January 26 this year, they have taken up two schools where groups of students have been volunteering as teachers two days a week – Friday second half and Saturday. “We are helping them with simple arithmetic, handwriting, grammar, sentences, drawing and stories apart from talking to them about health, hygiene, cleanliness and sanitation,” said another core-team member Dinesh Reddy.

The IIT students have taken up two schools under Pragati, these being Latiya Bagicha Primary School and the Momaikata Garh LP School, the latter situated in the next village called Mariapatti. “Most of the children come from very poor families. Their parents are either daily-wagers or petty shopkeepers. Some of the villagers work as cleaners and temporary workers in IIT too, while some work in factories in the industrial estate nearby,” said Megha Agarwala, who has already developed quite a rapport with the children.

The Latiya Bagicha Primary School, set up in 1978, has only 37 pupils in six classes, while one of the two teachers remains mostly absent. “Almost everyday he gets stuck in the traffic jam,” said Champa Boro, the other teacher who stays nearby. “It is difficult to manage the children who belong to different classes,” she added. But with IIT students like Pawan Kumar, Rohit Nelavelli, Ankit Gautam, Shalini Sinha, Anmol Kalia, Kunal Kishore, Madhurima and others coming in batches every Friday and Saturday, Champa Boro is finding a lot of relief.

That all is not well with this government-run school is also reflected from the enrolment figures of each of the six classes – Ka-shreni has five students, Class I eight, Class II seven, Class III five, Class IV ten and Class V only five. Likewise, in the Momaikata Garh LP School (established in 1965), there are only 49 students left of the 60 who had enrolled in January. The class-wise break-up is: Ka-shreni (5), Class I (11), Class II (10), Class III (11), Class IV (six) and Class V (six).

“We still have 60 names in the register. Of the eleven who have left a few have joined another school while I suspect that the others have gone to work,” said Krishna Chandra Das, the lone teacher who manages six classes simultaneously. While the school has two classrooms for the six classes, Das has shifted all the classes to the bigger room. “Otherwise, how can I alone manage them in two separate rooms?” he asked.

The only good thing about the two schools is that mid-day meal is regularly supplied. “Mid-day meal in all schools under Jalukbari assembly constituency is provided by an NGO called Akshay Patra,” informed Das. Jalukbari is represented in the state assembly by Himanta Biswa Sarma, who was till a few months ago the education minister of Assam.

“The children are not much aware of sanitation because majority of the villagers do not have toilets. “In Latia Bagicha, 35 of the 67 households do not have any kind of toilet. They all go to the Brahmaputra which is just across the embankment which also serves as a road,” pointed out Thirandas. The IIT-ians, who have already installed 15 solar lamps as streetlights in Latiya Bagicha village, are getting Sulabh to provide some toilets for the villagers, he added.

“It is an interesting experience that the students are gathering, in the process also contributing in a way towards betterment of lives of the villagers,” said Hemant B Kaushik, chairman of the IIT technical board that also supervises the students’ activities.Altogether 70 students are part of this Pragati initiative, he informed.

As for the children, they are finding it exciting by learning things from the IIT students. “I don’t miss school on Fridays and Saturdays. Didi tells us stories, lets us touch the laptop and teaches us Hindi too,” said Tara Kumari of Latiya Bagicha, whose father works as a daily-wager in a truck. “They are better than our teacher,” said Monika Boro, whose father is a truck handyman while her mother makes and sells country liquor.

Source:: Indian Express