At 11 am, the entire auditorium is packed. Around 200 people, 150 of them students, applaud as schoolmates dance to Garhwali folk songs and offer prayers to gods and goddesses. The room reverberates to the sound of the harmonium, cymbals and drums. The residents of Triyuginarayan, a small village in Uttarakhand’s Rudrapyag district, are celebrating the reconstruction of a Government Inter College. The Rs 2.83-crore project was funded by the The Indian Express Group with reader contribution in the wake of the 2013 Uttarakhand flash floods. [related-post] The Express Citizens’ Relief Fund has in the past undertaken and completed initiatives with the Kargil disabled soldiers fund, Mumbai blast victims fund, Pune War Memorial, Tsunami relief fund and the Bihar flood relief fund, among others. Though the Triyuginaraya inter-college was relatively unharmed by the June 2013 Uttarakhand flash floods, subsequent rains had left the institute in a dilapidated state. The reconstructed college, which admits students from classes VI to XII, was handed over to the district’s education department Friday in the presence of the District Education Officer L S Dhanu and Sub-Divisional Magistrate U S Chauhan. “I am grateful that The Indian Express took interest in the project, which will help the entire community. The state government has sanctioned Rs 2.58 crore and a committee has been formed to complete the remaining work,” Dhanu said. Chauhan, too, praised the initiative and said, “I haven’t seen the state government deliver a building of this quality.” Currently, classes are being conducted on the ground floor and the college is counting on the state government to complete work in the rest of the building soon. D S Kotwal, a teacher at the institute, said, “We hope the state government completes work soon as the college benefits many students from nearby areas. Earlier, girls used to go to college 15 km away from this place, and 80 per cent of girls who finished school never went for further studies.” Diksha Tiwary, a class XI student, said, “We will now have better facilities and a bigger room to study.” Bhakt Darsan Singh, president of the Parent-Teacher Association, said the building will also act as a shelter in case of any emergency in future. “The foundations of the building are very deep and strong. In case of any disaster, we can provide shelter to a lot of people,” Singh said. Swadesh Talwar, consultant, Indian Express CSR, said the project was “difficult” as the institute is built on hilly terrain. “In the aftermath of the Uttarakhand disaster, we had collected Rs 2.32 crore from our readers, whose contributions ranged from Rs 100 to Rs 1 lakh. We have put it to good use and hope the state government completes the entire college quickly,” Talwar said. Correction: The print version of the story incorrectly mentioned the figure in lakhs instead of crores.
