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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.

The Jain who would have been King

Suresh Jain’s missed shot at Maharashtra’s top post had little to do with his faith and everything to do with backroom arithmetic.

Jalgaon: In Maharashtra’s never-ending political theatre, few tales have endured with such puzzling elasticity as the claim that Jalgaon strongman Sureshdada Jain was reportedly denied the Chief Minister’s chair just because he was a Jain. This story, resurrected recently by MNS president Raj Thackeray for the second time since January 2023, is as persistent as it is misleading. Such whispers that play on identity and prejudice offer a reductive explanation for a far more tangled web of realpolitik.


After all, Shiv Sena founder the late Balasaheb Thackeray and Mukesh Patel, the two men central to the story, are no longer alive to clarify. And having written Sureshdada’s biography based on verifiable fact (which was praised by the man himself as “excellent”), I owe it to the record to separate invention from reality.


To those familiar with Maharashtra’s coalition churn in the mid-1990s, the true story is neither obscure nor ambiguous. After the 1995 state assembly elections, the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance found itself staring down the barrel of arithmetic defeat. With just 125 seats—20 short of a majority—the ruling coalition needed to cajole or coerce 20 independents to stay afloat. The Sena’s local lieutenants, not known for the finesse required in such delicate operations, were quickly outmanoeuvred by the Congress-NCP camp led by Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sharad Pawar.


The Jain factor

Sureshdada Jain, a seasoned Congress defector, had not only crossed over to the Shiv Sena but had earned Balasaheb Thackeray’s rare trust. The late Mukesh Patel, a loyal Shiv Sainik and strategist, had strongly urged Thackeray to make Jain the Chief Minister. Why? Because Jain had already demonstrated his cross-party prowess. Alongside Patel and the Dardas—Vijay from Nagpur and Rajendra from Sambhajinagar—he had once engineered a Rajya Sabha win for Vijay Darda against stiff opposition from Sharad Pawar himself. For Balasaheb, still smarting from Congress’s attempts to reclaim power, that was proof enough.


Thackeray did not hesitate. “Try,” he reportedly told Jain, thus greenlighting the mission to round up independent MLAs. But by then, most had already gravitated towards Pawar’s camp. The numbers did not add up, and the plan had collapsed. The Chief Minister’s chair remained elusive not because Sureshdada was from the Jain community, but because Pawar, Deshmukh and cold electoral math had already closed the window.


Balasaheb’s strategy

The charge of religious discrimination rings especially hollow when viewed against Balasaheb’s own conduct. Not only had he wooed Jain into the Sena fold, but he also appointed him Minister of Trade and Commerce (hardly a token portfolio) and later, Housing Minister after being inspired by Jain’s housing initiatives in Jalgaon. If Thackeray had indeed been wary of Jain’s religious identity, such appointments would never have followed.


Former BJP veteran Eknath Khadse claims Balasaheb opposed Jain due to his “businessman mentality”.


Political narratives often serve more as strategic assets than as historical accounts. One version invokes Prakash Javadekar as a ‘messenger’ while another features Khadse and Nitin Gadkari. The dramatis personae change, but the intended punchline remains unchanged, which is that Sureshdada didn’t fit the image.


And yet, Jain’s own record speaks of loyalty and risk-taking rarely seen in Maharashtra politics. He quit his Congress MLA seat to join the Sena. Later, when Sharad Pawar tried to lure him back with the promise of a ministerial berth, he refused. Instead, he marched back to Matoshree, resigned again and re-contested the election on a Sena ticket, winning once more.


Those spinning theories of faith-based exclusion ignore these inconvenient facts. They also gloss over the most obvious truth that politics is rarely governed by idealism or identity alone. Power, in Maharashtra as elsewhere, is often a function of timing, numbers and transactional trust. Jain may not have become Chief Minister, but it was not because of his religion. He simply played a game that was already lost.

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