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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.

Seventeen and Overthinking

At seventeen, most people are still figuring out which tracks to follow in life; some, like me, are beginning to wonder if the tracks we have chosen will ever get us anywhere worth going. For the past few weeks, I have been quietly engulfed by a kind of quarter-life crisis, questioning not just my past decisions but the very architecture of the life I hope to lead. Have I lived enough? Have I made choices that matter? Will the ambitions I harbour today translate into the life I desire tomorrow?


It is, paradoxically, the minor and the mundane that often precipitate the largest self-examinations. Should I invest in a new keyboard for my tablet, whose lag makes even a simple sentence take two minutes to type, or cling to the current one because it is beautiful and somewhat costly? Like so many teenagers, I am caught at a crossroads between practicality and desire, between what brings immediate pleasure and what promises long-term stability.


I have always thought of myself as certain, unusually so. From a young age, I knew what I wanted: the career I would pursue, the life I would lead. I had measured my future in terms of fulfilment and happiness rather than earnings or independence. Yet, now that I weigh the realities of ambition against practicalities, the certainty I once prized feels suddenly brittle. What if the choices I have planned will not suffice for my relentless ambitions? What if I am not as prepared as I assumed?


The transition into 12th grade has crystallised these anxieties. Compared with the punishing regimen of 10th grade - Sunday classes, four sample papers a day, two hours of sleep for a month - life now seems deceptively easier: six or seven hours of sleep, fewer formal obligations. Yet the stakes feel infinitely higher. Failure is no longer an abstract threat; it is a looming reality capable of dismantling everything I have built. The soundtrack of adolescence has shifted: gone is the irreverent, carefree Teenage Dirtbag; in its place plays a more sobering, inexorable tune of adult expectation.


In this uncertainty, memory becomes a kind of museum in which I relive a childhood only partially experienced. I did not ride motorbikes through the night with friends, linger by lakesides, or chase the sort of reckless freedom that seems to define youth. I lived, but cautiously, interspersing teenage impulses with adult restraint. I was always the ‘good kid,’ the ‘mature’ one, and now the regret is sharp: I have travelled too far along the road of responsibility to simply return to the chaos of youthful exuberance. I watch younger teenagers embrace recklessness with abandon and feel an ache at my own past restraint.


The tension is existential. Who, or what, is responsible for this overachievement? The city that shaped me, the expectations of others, or my own relentless self-discipline? I have spent most of my seventeen years ‘adulting’ when I need not have, fearful of mediocrity and failure, cautious of average outcomes and disappointment. Yet the paradox is that the tools of adolescence, the impulses, desires and creative naïveté remain unmastered. I am a young adult in circumstance but still a teenager in instinct.


Mumbai, however, has revealed the contours of my authentic self. The city did not so much change me as unlock me. In this urban anonymity, where expectations are few and connections selective, I have discovered dimensions of my personality that had lain dormant: spontaneity, audacity, and an unvarnished authenticity that had no space in my hometown. Moving was not life-changing; it was life-revealing.


Yet the reality of adulthood is humbling. I once imagined it as elegant and empowering, a natural extension of the ‘perfect’ self I tried to cultivate. Instead, it is messy, unrelenting, and deeply unsettling. It demands responsibility, foresight, and endurance I am not sure I am prepared to offer. Even with newfound freedom and clarity, the prospect of paying bills, filing taxes, voting responsibly, or answering to superiors feels daunting. The hurricane of adult life is already swirling around me, and I am not yet ready to step fully into it.


Seventeen, then, is a liminal age: neither adolescent nor fully adult. It is a space of reflection, of reckoning, and of tentative liberation. For now, all I can do is navigate this in-between, hoping to preserve both the reckless wonder of youth and the emerging responsibility of my coming years.


Alas, such is life.


(The author is a student of St. Xavier College, Mumbai.)

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