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By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

Maulana’s 'gullak' initiative touches 60K students

Read & Lead Foundation President Maulana Abdul Qayyum Mirza with daughter Mariyam Mirza. Mumbai/Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: In the new age controlled by smart-gadgets and social media, an academic from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar has sparked a small, head-turning and successful - ‘savings and reading’ revolution among middle-school children. Launched in 2006, by Maulana Abdul Qayyum Mirza, the humble initiative turns 20 this year and witnessed over 60,000 free savings boxes (gullaks)...

Maulana’s 'gullak' initiative touches 60K students

Read & Lead Foundation President Maulana Abdul Qayyum Mirza with daughter Mariyam Mirza. Mumbai/Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: In the new age controlled by smart-gadgets and social media, an academic from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar has sparked a small, head-turning and successful - ‘savings and reading’ revolution among middle-school children. Launched in 2006, by Maulana Abdul Qayyum Mirza, the humble initiative turns 20 this year and witnessed over 60,000 free savings boxes (gullaks) distributed to Class V-VIII students in 52 government and private schools. “The aim was to inculcate a love for ‘saving and reading’ among young children. We started by presenting small plastic ‘gullaks’ (savings boxes) at the Iqra Boys & Girls High School, and later to many other schools,” Mirza said with a tinge of satisfaction. Scoffed by sceptics, it soon caught the eyes of the schools and parents who loved the idea that kept the kids off mischief, but gave them the joy of quietly slipping Re. 1 or even Rs. 5 save from their daily pocket money into the ‘gullak’. “That tiny ‘gullak’ costing barely Rs 3-Rs 5, becomes almost like their personal tiny bank which they guard fiercely and nobody dares touch it. At the right time they spend the accumulated savings to buy books of their choice – with no questions asked. Isn’t it better than wasting it on toys or sweets or amusement,” chuckled Mirza. A childhood bookworm himself, Mirza, now 50, remembers how he dipped into his school’s ‘Book Box’ to avail books of his choice and read them along with the regular syllabus. “Reading became my passion, not shared by many then or even now… Sadly, in the current era, reading and saving are dying habits. I am trying to revive them for the good of the people and country,” Maulana Mirza told The Perfect Voice. After graduation, Mirza was jobless for sometime, and decided to make his passion as a profession – he took books in a barter deal from the renowned Nagpur philanthropist, Padma Bhushan Maulana Abdul Karim Parekh, lugged them on a bicycle to hawk outside mosques and dargahs. He not only sold the entire stock worth Rs 3000 quickly, but asked astonished Parekh for more – and that set the ball rolling in a big way, ultimately emboldening him to launch the NGO, ‘Read & Lead Foundation’ (2018). “However, despite severe resources and manpower crunch, we try to cater to the maximum number of students, even outside the district,” smiled Mirza. The RLF is also supported by his daughter Mariyam Mirza’s Covid-19 pandemic scheme, ‘Mohalla Library Movement’ that catapulted to global fame, and yesterday (Oct. 20), the BBC telecast a program featuring her. The father-daughter duo urged children to shun mobiles, video-games, television or social media and make ‘books as their best friends’, which would always help in life, as they aim to gift 1-lakh students with ‘gullaks’ in the next couple of years. At varied intervals Mirza organizes small school book fairs where the excited kids troop in, their pockets bulging with their own savings, and they proudly purchase books of their choice in Marathi, English, Hindi or Urdu to satiate their intellectual hunger. Fortunately, the teachers and parents support the kids’ ‘responsible spending’, for they no longer waste hours before screens but attentively flip pages of their favourite books, as Mirza and others solicit support for the cause from UNICEF, UNESCO, and global NGOs/Foundations. RLF’s real-life savers: Readers UNICEF’s Jharkhand District Coordinator and ex-TISS alumnus Abul Hasan Ali is full of gratitude for the ‘gullak’ habit he inculcated years ago, while Naregaon Municipal High School students Lakhan Devdas (Class 6) and Sania Youssef (Class 8) say they happily saved most of their pocket or festival money to splurge on their favourite books...! Zilla Parishad Girls Primary School (Aurangpura) teacher Jyoti Pawar said the RLF has proved to be a “simple, heartwarming yet effective way” to habituate kids to both reading and savings at a tender age, while a parent Krishna Shinde said it has “changed the whole attitude of children”. “We encourage books of general interest only, including inspiring stories of youth icons like Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai (28) and environmentalist Greta Thunberg (23) which fascinates our students, and other popular children’s literature,” smiled Mirza. The Maulana’s RLF, which has opened three dozen libraries in 7 years, acknowledges that every coin dropped into the small savings boxes begins a new chapter – and turns into an investment in knowledge that keeps growing.

Crude Hypocrisy

If there is one thing more exhausting than Donald Trump’s tantrums, it is America’s staggering capacity for hypocrisy. In slapping a 50 percent tariff on Indian exports ostensibly for continuing to buy discounted Russian oil amid the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Trump is not merely bullying a democratic ally but betraying the very principles America claims to stand for. This is not a defence of free markets or global order. It is economic hooliganism dressed in the rags of nationalist theatre.

 

The claim that India deserves punishment for doing while dozens of countries including EU countries, the US and China continue to trade with Russia is laughable. The United States remains a steady buyer of Russian fertilisers, uranium and palladium, to the tune of over $24 billion since 2022.

 

India, meanwhile, has shown spine. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s defiant stand that India will never compromise on the interests of its farmers and fishermen is a reminder that India’s agricultural backbone, which feeds 1.4 billion people and employs half the workforce, will not be sacrificed at the altar of American agro-industrial bullying. US agriculture enjoys massive state support and scale-driven cost advantages that make competition lopsided. India’s refusal to open its farm markets to such imports is not protectionism but food sovereignty.

 

Modi’s response has been statesmanlike. He has neither descended to Trump’s bluster nor allowed strategic ties with Washington to blind him to national interest.

 

Contrast that with Rahul Gandhi, who chose this moment to echo Trump’s bizarre remark that the Indian economy is “dead.” Gandhi, like Trump, has a flair for soundbites divorced from data. That he chose to parrot a foreign leader attacking India is not just poor politics but sabotage masquerading as dissent.

 

Modi’s planned visit to China for the SCO Summit offers a chance to deepen BRICS unity against Trump’s economic coercion. Brazil’s President Lula has already hinted at a coordinated response. If anything, Trump’s belligerence may succeed only in accelerating the de-dollarisation of global trade and the rise of alternate economic platforms that include China, India and Brazil. India must pursue a multipolar order in which the rules are not rewritten every four years to suit the whims of American presidents.

 

The more Washington bullies, the more New Delhi must double down on self-reliance and diversify its global alignments. As for Trump, his scattershot trade wars have historically backfired. In the past, he crippled American farmers with tariffs on China, turned allies into adversaries, and nearly gutted the WTO. His renewed campaign of tariff madness is less about policy and more about peacocking before his domestic base. It should be ignored with the contempt it deserves.

 

India is no longer the easy target it once was. It does not need to appease loudmouth populists to be taken seriously. The country’s economic rise is real. Its confidence is growing. And its farmers and workers deserve a world where trade is fair and not weaponised. Let America huff and puff. India will not bend.


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