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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.

'University' issues bogus construction worker certificates

Welfare funds looted, glaring political patronage exposed

AI generated image
AI generated image

Kolhapur: India’s booming construction sector has crossed Rs 3 lakh crore in annual turnover, and Maharashtra alone accounts for nearly Rs 30,000 crore annually, employing around 80 lakh workers. Yet, shockingly, less than 20 per cent of them are officially registered with the Maharashtra Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board — a body created under a 1996 law to safeguard their welfare.


By law, builders and contractors are required to deposit 1 per cent of the construction cost as a welfare cess with the Board. Maharashtra collects the highest amount in the country, averaging Rs 3,500 crore annually. This fund is meant to support welfare schemes for registered workers and their families. But over the years, these schemes have been deeply infiltrated by fake beneficiaries — and the rot runs deep.


A well-orchestrated racket involving the mass registration of bogus construction workers has not only looted public money but allegedly helped politicians secure electoral wins. Certain political leaders, eyeing captive vote banks, are believed to have greenlit fake IDs in exchange for votes, turning welfare into a tool for political gain.


The question now haunting the state is: where exactly is the “university” churning out fake construction worker certificates? Intelligence agencies, say experts, must investigate and expose this shadow network, as the very foundation of welfare distribution stands compromised.


Verification drive

Following rising allegations, the state’s Labour Department began an internal verification drive. In Kolhapur’s Kagal taluka, a large number of fake construction workers were unearthed, followed by similar findings in Hatkanangle. Investigations reveal that a strong network of middlemen and agents has been operating for years, raking in lakhs through commission-based scams tied to these fake registrations.


But the rot is not confined to just a couple of talukas — it’s systemic. What began as an attempt to address the lack of formal documentation among unorganised workers has been turned into a textbook example of how to exploit state schemes. Registered “beneficiaries” with no connection to the construction sector are drawing benefits while genuine workers remain excluded.


By 2019, the Welfare Board had amassed Rs 7,482 crore — but due to poor beneficiary identification, only Rs 830 crore had actually been utilised. After media scrutiny, the state rushed into a “beneficiary hunt.” One senior leader allegedly seized the opportunity, distributing fake IDs to non-workers, creating a large, loyal vote bank in the process.


The scheme took off — free benefits attracted thousands, and soon, fake construction IDs became a commodity. Voters wore the mantle of “construction workers” to tap into crores of rupees lying idle in government coffers. As a result, identifying and dismantling this bogus certificate machinery has now become the biggest challenge before the state.


The pattern is familiar. Be it the Laadki Bahin Yojana, transport fare concessions for senior citizens, or schemes for the differently abled — most state-run welfare programmes have fallen prey to fake beneficiaries and the agents who support them. Behind these lies an unregulated black market of forged documents, diverting funds meant for the most vulnerable.


Unless the state revamps its registration and verification processes, the loot will continue. Today, beneficiaries are registered online, money is disbursed without verification, and investigations begin only after complaints surface. The chain of accountability remains weak, and the political will to act is often absent.


This is not just Maharashtra’s problem. A recent RTI reply from the Union Labour Ministry revealed that Rs 70,744 crore across India remains unspent under construction worker welfare funds.

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