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By:

Shoumojit Banerjee

27 August 2024 at 9:57:52 am

Classroom of Courage

In drought-scarred Maharashtra, a couple’s experiment in democratic schooling is turning child beggars into model citizens In the parched stretches of Maharashtra, from Solapur to the drought-hit villages of Marathwada, a modest social experiment has quietly unfolded for nearly two decades. It is neither a grand government scheme nor a corporate-backed charity. Since 2007, the Ajit Foundation, founded by Mahesh and Vinaya Nimbalkar, has worked with children living at the sharpest edges of...

Classroom of Courage

In drought-scarred Maharashtra, a couple’s experiment in democratic schooling is turning child beggars into model citizens In the parched stretches of Maharashtra, from Solapur to the drought-hit villages of Marathwada, a modest social experiment has quietly unfolded for nearly two decades. It is neither a grand government scheme nor a corporate-backed charity. Since 2007, the Ajit Foundation, founded by Mahesh and Vinaya Nimbalkar, has worked with children living at the sharpest edges of society in Maharashtra. The foundation has become a home for out-of-school children, those who have never enrolled, the children of migrant labourers and single parents, and those who scavenge at garbage dumps or drift between odd jobs. To call their foundation an “NGO” is to miss the point. Vinaya Nimbalkar describes it as a “democratic laboratory”, where education is not merely instruction but an initiation into citizenship. The couple were once government schoolteachers with the Solapur Zilla Parishad, leading stable lives. Yet what they witnessed unsettled them: children who had never held a pencil, begging at traffic signals or sorting refuse for a living. Prompted by this reality, the Nimbalkars resigned their jobs to work full-time for the education of such children. Leap of Faith They began modestly, teaching children in migrant settlements in Solapur and using their own salaries to pay small honorariums to activists. Funds soon ran dry, and volunteers drifted away. Forced out of their home because of their commitment to the cause, they started a one-room school where Vinaya, Mahesh, their infant son Srijan and forty children aged six to fourteen lived together as an unlikely family. The experiment later moved to Barshi in the Solapur district with support from Anandvan. Rural hardship, financial uncertainty and the pandemic repeatedly tested their resolve. At one stage, they assumed educational guardianship of nearly 200 children from families that survived by collecting scrap on the village outskirts. Eventually, the foundation relocated to Talegaon Dabhade near Pune, where it now runs a residential hostel. Twenty-five children currently live and study there. The numbers may seem modest, but the ambition is not. Democracy in Practice What distinguishes the Ajit Foundation is not only who it serves but also how it operates. Within its walls, democracy is practised through a Children’s Gram Panchayat and a miniature Municipal Council elected by the children themselves. Young candidates canvass, hold meetings and present their budgets. Children maintain accounts and share decisions about chores, activities and certain disciplinary matters. In a country where democratic culture is often reduced to voting, the foundation’s approach is quietly radical. It treats children from marginalised backgrounds as citizens in formation. The right to choose — whether to focus on sport, cooking, mathematics or cultural activities — is respected. “We try never to take away what is their own,” says Vinaya Nimbalkar. Rather than forcing every child into a uniform academic mould, individual abilities are encouraged. A boy skilled in daily calculations may not be pushed into hours of bookish study; a girl who excels in cooking may lead the kitchen team. For children who have known only precarity, standing for election, managing a budget or speaking at a meeting can be transformative. On International Women’s Day, the foundation seeks visibility not just for praise but for partnership. If you are inspired by their mission, consider supporting or collaborating—your involvement can help extend opportunities to more children in need.

A Thought for Calendars That Hold the Globe Together

As we gear up to ritualistically welcome another New Year (2026) by instinctively flipping old calendars — virtual or printed paper — to the new year, exchanging greetings and making resolutions and plans for the year ahead, let us pause to think about what calendars truly mean and how profoundly they impact and shape our lives.


Just as every citizen in a democracy has the right to vote, every person — whether lettered, illiterate, intellectual, or novice — uses calendar and are impacted by it. Yet most of us have never paused to appreciate that the way we divide time into calendars is a creative construct of human ingenuity, born from generations of observation, debate, conflict, compromise and calibration.


Calendars give us far more than dates; they give us coordination, continuity, and a shared temporal compass. They tie us to nature’s rhythms, underpin our economic systems, and allow us to map the past and plan the future.


At first glance, a calendar seems a simple tool: it tells us what day it is, what meeting we have, and when festivals and holidays fall. But dive deeper, and you see something far more remarkable — a universal system of time measurement that synchronizes societies, economies, rituals, and history itself.


Rooted in Nature

The calendar is one of humanity’s oldest creative tools. Its origins lie in humankind’s effort to make sense of repeating patterns in nature — the daily rising and setting of the Sun, the monthly phases of the Moon, and the Earth’s yearly orbit around the Sun. Early civilisations devised ways to divide time into units that suited their needs, whether for planting crops or scheduling religious observances. Over millennia, these systems evolved, adopted across civilisations and history and were standardised into the calendars we use today. 


The word calendar itself comes from the Latin calendarium, meaning an “account book” — a reminder that calendars were practical tools for organizing civic life as much as symbolic ones. 


Calendar do far more than mark days. They enable among other things:

  • Economic planning: Businesses plan budgets, launch products, and set deadlines based on calendar years.

  • Social coordination: Appointments, meetings, and public events rely on a shared structure of time.

  • Cultural rhythm: Festivals, holidays, and anniversaries are organized around calendar dates.

  • Historical narrative: We use years and dates to record and interpret history.


At their core, calendars are systems of temporal coordination. They allow societies to synchronise actions, economies to function predictably, cultures to preserve continuity, and states to govern coherently. Like language or currency, calendars operate as shared infrastructure — invisible when functioning smoothly, but deeply disruptive when they fail, as seen in history.


Without a common calendar, there would be no shared “when” — and without shared time, there can be no coordinated society.


The Gregorian calendar, adopted globally, refined earlier calendrical systems to balance accuracy with usability. Its leap year rules — every year divisible by 4 is a leap year, except centuries not divisible by 400 — keep our civil calendar aligned with nature’s cycles with remarkable precision.


When India attained independence, there was no unified calendar for all of India, many local variations existed. This resulted in the National Calendar Reforms Committee, which was established to recommend a unified calendar for all of India. The committee chaired by Prof Meghnad Saha, eminent scientists and a parliamentarian, formalized lunisolar calendar for all of India in which leap years coincide with those of the Gregorian calendar.


Although Gregorian calendar is used for administrative purposes, yet holidays are still determined according to regional, religious, and ethnic traditions. Years are counted from the Saka Era; 1 Saka is considered to begin with the vernal equinox of 79 AD. The reformed Indian calendar began with Saka Era 1879 AD, Caitra 1, which corresponds to 22nd March, 1957.


So, in this season of greetings, as we mark the passage from the year 2025 to 2026, let’s not just celebrate the new year — let’s also celebrate the remarkable human achievement that makes it meaningful: the calendar itself.


Happy New Year 2026.


(The writer is Senior Advisor CSMVS, Mumbai and former Director of Nehru Science Centre. Views personal.)

 

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