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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.

Ajit Pawar’s Two-Handed Game

Maharashtra’s most agile politician finds that even political acrobatics have a breaking point

NCP (Sharad Pawar) State President Shashikant Shinde and party MLA Rohit Pawar during a rally in Navi Mumbai on Sunday. | Pic: PTI
NCP (Sharad Pawar) State President Shashikant Shinde and party MLA Rohit Pawar during a rally in Navi Mumbai on Sunday. | Pic: PTI

Pune: In Maharashtra’s labyrinthine politics, few figures are as deft or as difficult to read as Deputy Chief Minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) Ajit Pawar. As nephew of Sharad Pawar, the NCP’s grand old man, Ajit has spent the past three years perfecting a political manoeuvre that allows him to be both rebel and ruler: splitting his party to join the BJP-led Mahayuti government in Mumbai, while keeping a foot in the sentimental heartland of ‘Pawarite’ politics.


That balancing act is now being tested in the municipal elections of Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad, two cities that double as Ajit Pawar’s power base and political laboratory.


On paper, the arithmetic looks simple. The BJP and Ajit Pawar’s faction of the NCP are allies in the state government. Together they also share power with Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena. Yet on the ground in Pune, politics has been turned inside out. Ajit Pawar has stitched together a local understanding with his estranged uncle’s NCP faction - an alliance that has bewildered his partners in government and enraged the Congress, which promptly accused him of political double-dealing and demanded that he resign as deputy chief minister. Pawar ignored the demand, as he usually does.


Opportunistic Dealmaking

The oddity of the arrangement initially produced a curious stillness in the BJP’s ranks. Rumours swirled that Amit Shah, the Union home minister and the BJP’s chief enforcer, had given Ajit Pawar a free hand. Others speculated that the two Pawars were rehearsing a grand reunion that would eventually bring the entire NCP back into the orbit of the Narendra Modi government.


The suspense was broken this week by senior BJP leader and minister Chandrakant Patil, who chose to voice out loud what many in his party had been muttering in private. Why, he asked, have Sharad Pawar and Ajit Pawar come together? If they have done so today, might they not do so again tomorrow? And if that happens, should the BJP really be running a government with a reunited Nationalist Congress Party?


Shifting Gears

Patil’s intervention came just as Ajit Pawar had begun sharpening his rhetoric against the BJP, levelling corruption allegations that cut uncomfortably close to the bone. Until then, there had been an informal truce among the partners of the Mahayuti: fight local elections separately if necessary, but do not attack one another in public. Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena had honoured that understanding. So, initially, had Ajit Pawar. Then he changed tack.


From the BJP’s point of view, the shift was dangerous as it cannot allow Pawar’s accusations to go unanswered lest voters might actually start believing them.


The Congress, watching from the sidelines, has gleefully described the entire drama as a “fixed match.” In its telling, Ajit Pawar will rage against the BJP during the campaign, siphon off anti-BJP votes, and then dutifully return to the fold once the results are in. That may be too cynical even by Maharashtra’s standards. But it does capture a deeper truth that Pawar’s appeal lies precisely in his ability to speak in two voices at once.


For voters in Pune, this ambiguity is not merely theatrical. Ajit Pawar has spent years cultivating an image as a blunt-speaking local strongman who delivers roads, water and development. By attacking the BJP now, he taps into a reservoir of resentment among urban voters who are weary of the party’s dominance. At the same time, his position in the state government reassures business interests and cooperative barons that he remains plugged into the levers of power.


The risk is that such tactical brilliance can curdle into strategic confusion. If Pawar succeeds in mobilising a bloc of voters defined by their opposition to the BJP, what is he to do with them once the ballots are counted? Walk back into the arms of his saffron allies and risk being seen as a fraud? Or drift further towards his uncle, inviting the wrath of the party that currently keeps him in office?


The BJP, for its part, is no less conflicted. It needs Ajit Pawar’s numbers in the state assembly and his grip over the cooperative networks of western Maharashtra. But it also knows that the Pawars, uncle and nephew alike, have made careers out of using larger parties as ladders rather than lodestars. Patil’s public doubts were a thinly-veiled warning that such ambiguity has limits.


Whatever the outcome in Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad, Ajit Pawar will emerge with either proof that his two-handed game still works or a reminder that even the most agile political acrobat eventually has to choose which side of the rope he stands on.

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