My eye-view on our recent activities - 17th May 2010

The scorching sun o’er my head,
Is taunting me to step up and view -
This town of little brown squirrels;
Where sun is shade, but smiles aren’t few.

I can thickly say that I have been associated with the cause of sending all children of India to school for over a year now. So, what has been my learning so far?

• Underprivileged society of India finds it hard to send their children to school for myriad of reasons such as poverty, lack of awareness, unavailability of schools, disbelief on the dictums of our education system etc
• Children sometimes do not want to go to school; parents are unable to pick the rod (remember spare the rod and spoil the child, I am not endorsing it here either!!)
• There is a lack of, what experts call – Joyful learning in schools. Thus, a part of the blame must be shared by the lackluster education system, including teachers’ sloppy teaching methodologies
• Disagreeable future prospects of these half-heartedly taught and improperly examined nevertheless degree-holding bourgeois.


The above-mentioned for me is not learning, but findings. When it comes to learning, I would rather say that I learnt to be humane. I learnt to step into a world different than mine and befriend people. I learnt to constructively disagree with people and in turn gather their perspective. I learnt to lead and unabashedly, be led. In nutshell, I learnt to grow as a person.

A lot of this learning came to me during the last couple of weeks. I have been meeting the communities of immigrant workers working at construction sites across Thane for my Photography project with Click Rights group at CRY. At the photography workshop they rightly taught me that it is not the camera but me who clicks a photograph, so I must first bring in the human touch by connecting with my subjects and then my pictures shall speak for themselves. It took me sometime but eventually I came around the idea of talking to my subjects before pulling out my camera. To whet your inquisitive appetite, the pictures came out decent!


Last week I accompanied Ratna, Ekta and Krishna to the same communities for a detailed survey of the reasons why the children of these immigrants stayed out of school. What I have wanted to do for quite some time which I must do it now – is to scream from top of the roof tops – parents want to send their children to school!!
Suma Ganguly, a Bengali Brahmin from as far as Kolkata is staying in Gandhinagar, tin shed – it cannot be called a hutment for crying out loud – with her husband and 2 young girls while the eldest is studying at a school in Kolkata. Similar is the story of most of these families who hail from rural West Bengal. These families have no clue about “Child Rights” or for that matter “Human Rights”, like most Indian brethrens, they have learnt to “survive”. We all do, I guess. But God forbid if I ever have to struggle with getting drinking water, proper food or security, I would be bitter and angry.


That is where my learning started…

These people are happy as little brown squirrels. They live in a world swarmed by mosquitoes and insects, no electricity nor proper water but boy! They remember how to smile. I will share with you my first feeling when I went amidst these people – an uncanny guilt. Guilt of being what I am – an upper middle class, convent educated, well-fed woman talking about celestial things like good education and bright future. I hesitated in entering too much into their lives out of the lame fear of exploring what I might not be able to handle. But impressions change, people evolve. So, did I.


After meeting some 10 odd families in 2 days I realized that these people are neither bitter nor hopeful. They are struggling. They have similar aspirations as ours, just in smaller sizes but their meager means pull them back repeatedly. The Focused Group Discussion that we had with these families did not look like a research methodology from a social science text book, but an inter-family discussion in a neighborhood. How did these people manage to be so warm? I kept wondering throughout the discussion and even post that.


I have deduced one fact – It is not just the system’s undervalued functioning that keeps them from achieving, neither is it solely the lack of mullah. It is the matter of free will. Having said that I would also like to reinforce that I do not mean to undermine the effects of an ill-functioning system nor do I mean to dishonor the value of money in our society, but I want to send a word of immense appreciation to people like Mr. Patel, a migrant carpenter, who despite all odds is getting his three daughters taught in a local school for unlike his future, theirs, he says, need to be brightened up. Applause!


While I am contemplating over the seriousness of what lies beneath the poverty-laden lives of Mr. Patel and others, I often get distracted by the loud giggles of their children. How innocent is childhood.

Little do they understand why we are visiting them, but to them the term ‘visit’ is important. Someone is ‘visiting’ them and they are happy about it. I like to be with them more than being with adults. They don‘t judge me, they don’t make me accountable for anything – they are just happy that I am visiting them.


Mother of all facts – these children love going to school. Like most of the kids, for some it is a daily war against bullies or homework, but it is part of their lives. They love to play in their school uniforms until they are beyond repair via any Rin or Surf challenge! just like I did as a kid. They share the stories of their friends and foes with fervent voices. So, what is that I am there to fix or advocate for?

Among these happily giggling faces are a few smiling but evidently uncomfortable kids. They listen to these stories but cannot become a part of them. They help the other kids soil their uniforms because they don’t have any of their own. Some might say that they are too young to feel jealousy or its consequential sadness; I say it’s not true. These children out of school are sad and jealous, they want to be a part of this entire fun of learning and books, uniforms and time tables, home-works and teachers, it is their RIGHT!


After visiting three communities and attending a Focused Group Discussion, I have had a sort of reinforcement of thought while on a mile long ride on the learning bus.

I congratulate all those who became part of these surveys not because we became minions of some earth shattering change in the field of child rights, but because we learnt how does the life at the other side of the fence look and feel like.
Let us all treat this as good first step, for all I know – ‘there are miles to go before I sleep’…