August 2004

From the Editor's Desk

Hello readers!
I’m here again with the fourteenth issue of our e-newsletter and hope you had liked our earlier one. This one also tries to bring to you a milieu of information, issues and excitement, which we were part of. Needless to remind but still, we look forward to your feedback, since we believe healthy exchange of views definitely have a positive effect on our work. So read on and write back.
- Anupama (Editor)

When the girls go marching on

Associated life and civic participation lead to group solidarity, eventually enabling social change in a democracy. However, women in our country are often unable to become participants in this process of social change. Besides the more overt issues such as socio-economic marginality and cultural factors prohibiting the coming together of women, there are many subtle and very practical reasons why women are not usually agents of change within communities. The ability to work together depends primarily on trust, but it is extremely difficult to foster a deep level of trust unless there is a space in which people can come together and have the opportunity to build trust. In addition to being a programme for the provision of elementary education, our Nabadisha programme seeks to be a catalyst for community development through community participation. Keeping this in mind, we have invested a great deal of time in trust building.

During our interactions with the families of children coming to our Naba Disha centres we realized that there was a great deal of untapped potential among adolescent girls of the community, who could become a potent social force if provided a proper forum. What these girls needed most was a sense of psychological empowerment through awareness generation. We wanted them to see the potential within themselves and their communities. In order to do this we decided to form a ‘community watch group’ amongst them, and offered them a need based ‘life-skill’ curriculum, a process that would bring them together as a group and enable them to take up collective action and work towards improving the quality of their lives. The very first meeting threw up evidence that our judgment was not misplaced. Even when discussing the probable array of vocational skills that they would like to learn, a bright young girl told us with a smile ‘you were asking us about the problems we face and we told you about our daily quarrels while queuing up for water. I think I can guess what you are actually expecting us from all this…I will try and see that there is no more fighting.”

In the next meeting they proudly reported that they managed to pass a full week without the usual fight over access to water. The have already completed a survey to track out of school children in their locality and have taken their role of acting as a community watch group very seriously.

These young girls may not be aware of a term called ‘holistic education’ – one that enables and empowers a human being to live and work together… they may not know of lofty theories of psychological empowerment leading to the creation of social capital, yet they instinctively understood that their personal growth and the subsequent growth of their communities depends on their own innate desire for betterment.

We feel that our efforts have borne fruit when we are able to witness such shining examples of realization of potential within a community.

Round Table-2

You might remember our State level Consultative Meet in the month of February, which was very well attended and had aroused interest among many. Afterwards, many people showed keen interest for another such Meet and we were also pondering over the right time to hold the next one. The elections took place, the new government was ushered in, and the Common Minimum Programme (CMP) was announced. CMP's stance on education included - allocating 6% of GDP for education, 2% cess for education etc, which is a glimmer of hope.

It was felt appropriate to organise another Meet, where these new developments will be discussed and hence a Meet was organised on June 26, at the Academy of Fine Arts. It was a coming together of various opinion makers, like Md. Salim (MP), Mrs. Malini Bhattacharya (Former Rajya Sabha MP), Prof. Mihir Bhattacharya, Mr. Poromesh Acharya (Educationist), Prof. Ranju Gopal Mukerjee ( President of Co-ordinating Body of 5 School Boards), Mr. Bhabesh Moitra (Former President, WB Board of Primary Education), Mrs. Sutapa Chakraborty (Director, Human Rights Law Network), Mr. D.G. Ghatak (Deputy Director, School Education Department, West Bengal) et al. The discussion was moderated by Mr. Uttam Sengupta (Resident Editor, The Telegraph).

Interesting observations, various ideas and critical issues came across during this charged up session. Participants felt that the discussion should be kept focused on elementary education, and the plethora of things that were discussed ranged from issues of setting up a Commission on elementary education, debate on 2% cess, on the draft legislation of the proposed Free and Compulsory Education for Children Bill, and how the formal education system is increasingly weakening due to several factors and the urgent need to define alternate schooling.

As an outcome of the discussion, a charter of demands was framed which was endorsed by all who were present, and quite a few later on. We are intending to take it up to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and concerned MPs and officials so that these demands get addressed.

Vikramshila's Diary

A touch of magic

Recently we came in touch with famous magician Mr. P.C. Sorcar (Jr.) through one of our cultural programmes. He made special arrangement for around 900 Nabadisha children who got to see his performance on stage last month…. a life time experience for them. They were in complete awe when they came to their centres the next day…. And would talk of nothing else. They made beautiful drawing of whatever had mesmerized them that day. Things which appealed to them most, found vibrant expressions on pieces of paper. We made a collage of some of the pictures and prepared a huge plaque with it. When the Nabadisha children went to Mr.P.C. Sorcar’s house to present the plaque he was overwhelmed by the gesture. He said this was one of the best gifts he has received in his life.

Beyond Literacy

Our Director Mrs. Shubhra Chatterji was invited by Rotary Club of Kolkata to give a talk on literacy on their occasion of celebrating the month of July as the literacy month, on July 20th. She titled her talk “Beyond Literacy”, giving due focus on the importance of quality education, which respects equality of opportunity and how is it different from making people merely literate. This perspective impressed the audience, and it raised several questions in their minds, which were discussed in a brief and lively question-answer session.

Shiksha adda

On June 2nd, we invited Mr. D.G. Ghatak (Deputy Director, School Education Department, West Bengal) and Dr. Bratin Chattopadhyay (Vishwa Bharati) to a Shiksha adda on Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan - the pros and cons of running programmes in a mission mode. The adda threw up many important issues in an informal manner, such as the future of thousands of transitional schools that have been opened in an ad hoc manner, the dichotomy of “resource-crunch” and “unspent balance” which governments have to face, the ever increasing layers of schools in our education system, etc. The heated discussion kept us all so engaged that the tea turned cold, but left us all very energized at the end of it.