When school is fun…

Mukti Chakrabarti holds a masters degree in drama and had once worked closely with the doyen of Bengali theatre, Rudraprasad Sengupta. After various stints in the corporate world and a brief affair with entrepreneurship, she found her true calling in championing the cause of women’s empowerment and child education. In 1998, she decided to give it a go.

She soon realised that setting up a school was an uphill task. Hundreds of children around Rahara never went to school. Many went to schools with one teacher who would frequently be absent. Without education, the next generation would be poorer than the one now. Yet, no one seemed to care. The parents would rather have the children working as household help, or worse still, employed in nearby factories.

Says Chakrabarti, “The apathy didn’t shock me much. It’s much the same everywhere in India. But I realised that even if I could set up a school, getting children to attend it would be a difficult task.”

Funding, the perennial thorn in all great ideas, was yet another challenge. Without prior experience, funding from institutional sources was a long shot. “We had to depend heavily on our family and friends. We have now started a practice of monthly subscription from all well-wishers, which ensures a hand-to-mouth existence for the school.”

Once the teething problems were sorted out, the school was finally set up at Chakrabarti’s family home in Khardah, Rahara, where she had grown up after moving to West Bengal. The house had remained uninhabited for sometime and, as Chakrabarti puts it, “hasn’t been put to better use ever in its forty-year existence.”

Today, the school boasts of nearly 130 students from the ages of 5 to 16 years. Due to space crunch, 40 students attend together in a batch, with two batches held every day. Many of these students are enrolled with government schools where classes are held almost as often as Assembly elections. For them, this school can actually ensure that they clear the school level and get an opportunity to study further.

At present, the school employs five teachers, four of whom are paid for their services, and one being a honorary teacher. The teaching staff boasts of a retired school teacher and a masters degree holder. Chakrabarti also often fills in as a teacher when required, as do a few of her family members who help her out as and when possible.

All students are provided with snacks that range from cakes to sandwiches. To make learning fun, general knowledge classes are held on Monday, art classes on Wednesday and music classes on Friday. As 12-year old Sushmita, a student at the school, puts it, “We never knew that school could be a place we could actually look forward to.”

Not all, however, are as keen to come to school as Sushmita. Many of the students come from very poor families, their parents working as daily wage earners. The parents force the students to come to school, which, Chakrabarti feels, “Is possibly my single biggest achievement. I never expected such widespread acknowledgement.”