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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.

China’s Silent Annexation

Beijing’s renewed claims over the Shaksgam Valley lay bare how quiet coercion is redrawing the India-China-Pakistan frontier.

A barren tract of ice and rock high in the eastern Karakoram has again re-emerged as a geopolitical fault line at one of Asia’s most volatile junctions. China’s recent reassertion of its claim over the Shaksgam Valley, coupled with fresh justifications for infrastructure development there, has revived an old dispute that India insists is neither settled nor obscure.


The Shaksgam Valley, also known as the Trans-Karakoram Tract, lies north of the Siachen Glacier and south of China’s Xinjiang region, abutting Aksai Chin to the east. Before 1947 it formed part of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, which acceded to India at independence. During the first Indo-Pakistani war of 1947–48, Pakistan illegally occupied large swathes of the region, including areas adjacent to Shaksgam. Then in March 1963, Pakistan signed a border agreement with China ceding roughly 5,180 square kilometres of the valley to Beijing.


Root Cause

That agreement remains the original sin of the dispute. Pakistan, which did not possess sovereign title over the territory, had no legal authority to gift it away. Even the document itself tacitly acknowledges its provisional nature. Article 6 explicitly states that the boundary settlement would be reopened once the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan was resolved. In other words, China’s claim rests not on final settlement but on a conditional arrangement with a party that lacked standing. India rejected the agreement at the time and has done so consistently since, declaring it “illegal and invalid.”


Yet, facts on the ground have a way of hardening into perceived legitimacy. Since the 1960s China has administered Shaksgam as part of its Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, steadily extending roads, logistical networks and security infrastructure across the high plateau. These efforts accelerated after the launch of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Beijing’s flagship Belt and Road project linking Kashgar in Xinjiang to the Chinese-developed port of Gwadar on Pakistan’s Arabian Sea coast.


CPEC is often presented as an economic venture. In strategic terms, it is something else entirely. By creating an overland energy and trade corridor that bypasses the Malacca Strait (China’s acknowledged maritime choke point), Beijing reduces its vulnerability to naval disruption. Shaksgam, though remote, sits uncomfortably close to this axis. Infrastructure built ostensibly for commerce can be repurposed swiftly for military logistics, allowing faster troop movement, better surveillance and deeper integration between Chinese and Pakistani forces.


Strategic Triangle

For India, this is not an abstract concern. Shaksgam lies near the Siachen Glacier, the world’s highest battlefield, and not far from Aksai Chin, territory seized by China after the 1962 war and still claimed by New Delhi. Together, these regions form a strategic triangle where India faces its two principal adversaries in tacit alignment. The development of dual-use infrastructure here tightens the pincer, raising the costs of Indian defence while enhancing China’s ability to apply pressure across multiple fronts.


Beijing’s method is familiar. Assert claims through maps and consolidate them through construction. Then, normalise such claims through repetition. China has deployed this playbook in the South China Sea, along the Line of Actual Control with India, and increasingly in the Himalayas’ lesser-known corners. The Shaksgam Valley fits well into this pattern of ‘salami slicing,’ where such incremental moves are deployed to change ground realities without triggering outright conflict.


While India’s response has been firm in rhetoric, it has been constrained by geography and resources. New Delhi has reiterated that Shaksgam is Indian territory and condemned China’s activities as attempts to change the status quo. Behind the scenes, India has accelerated border infrastructure development, improved troop mobility and invested in surveillance and niche technologies suited for high-altitude warfare.


But the challenge is broader than military preparedness. The dispute unfolds at a moment of systemic flux in the international order. Power is diffusing, alliances are hardening and coercive strategies are increasingly normalised. China’s partnership with Pakistan exemplifies a transactional alignment aimed at constraining India’s rise. By embedding its presence in disputed territory, Beijing complicates any future settlement of Kashmir while binding Islamabad closer to its strategic orbit.


This leaves India with limited but important choices. One is clarity of purpose. New Delhi must decide whether it is content merely to contest China’s claims diplomatically or prepared to impose political, economic and strategic costs for continued encroachment. Another is coalition-building. As Asia’s security architecture shifts, engagement with like-minded powers becomes less optional than essential. Shared concerns over coercion, connectivity and territorial revisionism provide ample common ground.


The value of Shaksgam Valley lies precisely in its emptiness, which allows power to be projected quietly and claims to be entrenched without spectacle. That is why it matters.


China’s cartographic confidence rests on the assumption that time and infrastructure will do its work. India’s task is to ensure that legality, history and strategy are not eroded by altitude and neglect. Frozen valleys have a way of thawing into flashpoints. Shaksgam is one such place and ignoring it would be a luxury India can no longer afford.


(Author is retired naval aviation officer and defence and geopolitical analyst. Views personal.)

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