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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.

Road Rash

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A few days ago, I was travelling from Bangalore to Mumbai. This was hardly my first trip to the South. I am on those roads often - sometimes for work, sometimes for the restless pleasure of the journey itself. Years of such travel have honed my instinct to notice the small details: the slope of a flyover, the placement of a milestone, the shifting patterns of truck convoys. The highway is a diary. It tells you a lot about a country, if you bother to read it.


Not long ago, the stretch from Katraj in Pune to Kolhapur was a joy. The tarmac rolled smoothly under the tyres, the trucks kept their dignified distance, and the scenery had the quiet grace that makes long-distance driving something of a meditation. You could hold a steady speed and steady thoughts.


Today, that same stretch is a catastrophe. From Katraj to somewhere near Hubballi, the road is torn apart. Not for the occasional repair, but in the throes of full-scale reconstruction. Diversions erupt every few hundred metres - a left here, sharp right there, through narrow cuts that would challenge even a rally driver. The untrained driver is not merely inconvenienced but he is positively in danger.


The problem is not just the detours or delays. It is the intent. India’s roads, it seems, are no longer built for people to travel on. They are built for contracts to be signed, for repairs to be perpetual, for profits to be skimmed. A smooth, safe, functional road is a finished project whereas an unfinished road becomes eternally a renewable source of income.


And they accidents occur with grim regularity, the official line is to blame the driver for speeding, fatigue or distraction. Rarely is there mention of sudden two-way stretches with no warning signs, of diversions that funnel vehicles head-on at night with blinding headlights, of curves sharper than they appear. It is a wonder more people do not die.


But many do. India records over 1.6 lakh road deaths each year. In a nation of 145 crore, that is barely a murmur in the news cycle. And yet, there is no outcry, no resignation and no systemic shame. Life is cheap, and the highway system reminds you of it with every jolt to your spine.


At night, the Katraj–Hubballi run turns into something close to a video game. Trucks loom suddenly from unlit corners, motorbikes dart without reflectors, diversions arrive with no reflective paint or hazard lamps. You drive not in confidence but in constant dread, as if survival is less a matter of skill and more a matter of luck.


Our highways have been proudly unfinished since independence. They are monuments not to engineering achievement but to bureaucratic inertia, political favour and contractual appetite. They are not arteries of commerce or threads stitching together a vast nation but inhuman obstacle courses laid out for the citizenry to endure.


So here is to our highways. Proudly unfinished since independence. Built not for travel, but for trials. Not for citizens, but for contracts.


Drive safe. Or better, do not drive at all.


(The writer is CMD of a private company. Views personal.)

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