Five stories of struggle and success
THE fate of India may change when education reaches every village. But until that happens, a handful of young men and women will continue to fight their circumstances and government apathy, to rise above their deprivation. In this cover, we bring you five such stories of hardship and struggle, of people born in places with limited means, but with unlimited dreams.
Common in their difficult journey, is a passion which has kept these bright young people going, while they wore old, used clothes, studied from borrowed books and sold papad to run the household. This they braved, because for them education was their only hope for a better life.
But their struggles also bring to the fore an imperfect education system that while on one hand gives poor students a chance to change their lives, on the other leaves them with bruised self-confidence. Because as with most, their journey starts from government schools – some even without roofs or good teachers -that teach in Hindi or a regional language. So, when they come to big cities for higher studies, their poor English or communication skills create a social divide between them and the others. As though getting into the country’s top institutes wasn’t enough, now they have to prove that they are equally good, all over again.
Nevertheless, their personal journeys have burnished and tempered them so much, that today no problem frightens or scares them. Writing about these young men and women has been a humbling experience, as one learns from them, that much can be achieved with very little.
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Darjeeling’s Bitter Brew
The GJM has terrorised the hill town, but the locals will bear it all for a separate state. SHOBHITA NAITHANI reports from the heart of ‘Gorkhaland’
KALIMPONG, ONE of three subdivisions of Darjeeling district, is barely a stone’s throw away when a band of youth — girls and boys not more than 18 years of age — flags your car to a halt. They order the doors and boot of the car unlocked. As the others rummage through our belongings, one of them asks, “Rakshi (liquor)?”
Not very far away, past a rutted road running 80 kilometres, a similar group has gathered atop an isolated platform in Darjeeling town. You ask them what brings them there and a Class 9 dropout who claims she is 18 — but looks not a day older than 16 — answers readily, “Our maa (mother), mitti (soil) and Gorkhaland.” Rashmika Thapa is one of the 8,500 members of the “peacekeeping” outfit Gorkhaland Personnel (GLP), a wing of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) led by its self-appointed chief Bimal Gurung.
The task of the group, which is being trained by ex-servicemen in seven camps across the West Bengal hills, is to enforce bandhs called by GJM, ensure locals wear traditional Nepali attire to exhibit their cultural differences to a larger audience, seize and smash liquor bottles and protect Gurung himself. What they get in return is a promise of being absorbed in police services once Gorkhaland, a separate state for Nepali speakers in the three hill sub-divisions of Darjeeling (Kalimpong, Kurseong and Darjeeling), the Siliguri Terai and the Dooars area, is created.
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