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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.

Completing Raman’s Unfinished Revolution

Honouring Sir C.V. Raman means advancing his legacy by using RDI to transform India’s discoveries into enduring capabilities.

November 7 marks the anniversary of Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman’s birth, India’s first Nobel laureate in science. His life remains a clear example of how far intellectual courage can carry a nation, even before it possesses the institutional support or material wealth to nurture scientific inquiry. Using simple optical setups, tuning forks, sunlight, and glass plates instead of costly instruments, Raman observed how light scatters when passing through matter. What emerged from this quiet experiment would transform the study of molecular structure and show the world that India could produce science of the highest originality.


Quiet Revolution

Raman’s life shows us that true scientific greatness comes not from abundant resources, but from intellectual courage. Working in modest surroundings, he discovered the phenomenon now known as the Raman Effect, an achievement that reshaped modern spectroscopy worldwide. In fact, one could say that the Raman Spectrometer was the original RDI (Raman Discovered Innovation), a breakthrough born in India that became a global technology, yet one whose commercial and industrial potential we did not ourselves realize. This was not the fault of the scientist, but of the ecosystem that did not yet exist. The insight was ours, but the instruments, industries, and markets that followed grew elsewhere.


Today, Raman spectroscopy is indispensable in pharmaceutical quality control, materials science, forensic science, semiconductor fabrication, biomedical diagnostics, planetary exploration, and the preservation of cultural heritage. It shows how a single scientific discovery can seed entire technological domains. The Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) Scheme 2025, announced by the Prime Minister at ESTIC 2025, is India’s opportunity to ensure that such a story does not repeat. The knowledge generated in our laboratories must be developed, engineered, manufactured, and scaled within India’s own innovation ecosystem.


India today stands at a threshold that Raman could not have imagined. We have a broad network of national laboratories, research universities, technology institutes, and increasingly sophisticated industries. We have a young and ambitious scientific workforce fluent in global research languages, and an entrepreneurial ecosystem willing to attempt what earlier generations could not. Start-ups are venturing into plasma gasification, point-of-care diagnostics, climate-resilient agriculture, water purification, medical imaging, and small-satellite launch systems. The raw material for scientific progress, namely intellect, curiosity, and imagination, exists in abundance.


Knowledge conversion

What India needs now is alignment. We must be able to move from discovery to development, to product, to widespread implementation. Knowledge alone does not generate national capability. Knowledge that converts does.


The Rs. 1 lakh-crore RDI Scheme 2025, anchored by the Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), is India’s first systematic effort to build this conversion system. The establishment of an RDI Cell and a Special Purpose Fund allows research programs to continue beyond short funding cycles. The scheme funds ecosystems rather than isolated projects. These include shared instrumentation facilities, pilot-scale manufacturing plants, translational research offices, regulatory facilitation frameworks, and real-world test beds in rivers, farms, clinics, schools and industries.


This structural model is what enabled other nations to convert science into capability. The United States built leadership in semiconductors and computing through DARPA, where universities, suppliers, and users iterated together. Japan’s excellence in materials and precision engineering grew from long-term coordination between academia and manufacturers under MITI. South Korea’s rise in memory and display technology emerged from shared research roadmaps between institutes and industry. China’s position in solar manufacturing and batteries came from mission-linked scaling systems where translation was built into research from the beginning.


The lesson is clear. Scientific insight becomes national power only when research, engineering, manufacturing, and deployment are aligned from the start. To achieve this alignment, three foundational shifts are essential.


First, restore the legitimacy of scientific risk. Frontier science involves uncertainty and failed attempts. A culture that punishes failure gradually eliminates originality. RDI must protect curiosity and exploration while guiding translation.


Second, ensure continuity of teams and funding. Scientific excellence develops cumulatively. Laboratories become centers of gravity only when teams stay together long enough to form shared understanding. When research groups dissolve, tacit knowledge dissolves with them. Continuity is the precondition for depth.


Third, build translation infrastructure with the same seriousness that we build research laboratories. Discoveries must move through prototyping, supply chain integration, certification, regulatory clearance, field testing, and cost optimization. These steps require patient engineering and iterative refinement. Scientists must learn to think like engineers. Engineers must learn to think like users. Institutions must learn to measure progress in reliability and reproducibility, not only in publications.


This final point deserves emphasis. Translation takes time. MRI took decades to become clinical practice. Lithium-ion batteries took decades to become commercially dominant. The technologies that shape civilization mature gradually through repeated refinement. Rushing translation weakens ideas. Nurturing translation strengthens them. The success of the RDI Scheme 2025 must therefore be measured not by rapid announcements but by durable capability. This moment is promising: Indian industry is now a co-creator, not just a consumer.


With deeper manufacturing ecosystems, better quality systems, and modernized regulations, the private sector can finally partner with research from the start. Yet discipline is key - RDI must not be judged by start-ups or patents, but by reliability, reproducibility, and the ability to scale. True success lies in systems that endure long after the first funding cycle ends.


To honour Raman is not merely to celebrate his genius. It is to complete the unfinished half of his story. Raman discovered but the world built on it. This time, India must discover and India must build.


Raman once said: “The essence of science is independent thinking and hard work.” India has always had independent thinkers. What we needed was a system that allows knowledge to travel its full arc from curiosity to capability. The RDI Scheme 2025 is that system.


(The author is the former Director, Agharkar Research Institute, Pune; Visiting Professor, IIT Bombay. Views personal.)

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