POLICE TEACHERS OF SOLIDARITY EDUCATION PROGRAM - Part-2

POLICE TEACHERS (Part-II)

Click here to read the first part, "Ek Jawan - Sow Kissan".

 “Today, what we are going to do?” I have asked the children as they stood up and said “Good Evening Sir” to me.

 “We are revising the multiplication tables” said Lakshmi a seven year old girl in our learner group who walks across two miles of derelict ground to get to our camp and always reaches as the first one. She comes with her two younger siblings who play around with others as they are too small to study. There are some thirty other children that day in the class which is a much lesser strength, as some times it goes upto sixty.

“Who can say the multiplication table of twelve without error?”

I was surprised to see several small hands raised in the air. Just a round of face scanning and I spotted the smallest among them and said “Aap Boliye”.

Police Teachers

And here comes a small boy Chandu, in a sudden surge sang the multiplication table like a lullaby in one breath in his mother tongue Telugu, by standing with arms crossed across the chest, a body language customary here while standing in front of a teacher. When it’s finished, I turned towards Mr. G, the translator to see whether he said it correctly.

 “Yes sir, he said correctly..”  He nodded his head with a smile. It did give him a deep sense of satisfaction that the small boy didn’t forget what he teach him the other day. Mr. G is one such constable in my company who takes tuition to some forty odd children regularly attending the classes we organize for them inside our camp. These “police teachers”, as soon as they done with their regular duty hours would attend to these children in their education with dedication and austerity.



I took a fifty rupee note from my pocket and gave it to Chandu as a cash reward amidst a hearty round of applause from all other students, he coyly accepted it and said, “Thank You Sir”. A gleam of elation emanates from his otherwise weary eyes.   

Probably the only thing that makes Lakshmi, Chandu and several other children living in this part of the world different from their counterparts in cities is that they are the perfect example of an ordinary “Koya” tribal life in this border village at the Andhra –Orissa region. There are many such villages here in this area encircled by dense reserve forest where effects of illiteracy and to an extent malnutrition, are taking a heavy toll on the children of their age. They are all having a childhood without basic rights.

While on tolerant about mistakes made by me in understanding the intricacy of the state of mind ubiquitous among adults in this tribal belt, as I narrated in the first part of this story, my target has now been shifted to offer `tuition` to smaller children living in these areas which we named "SOLIDARITY EDUCATION PROGRAM" for that it's an initiative by one of the largest Para Military force in the world helping the poor farmers. A solidarity betwwen kissan and Jawan.



Innocent faces

 



This time it has been a new lesson for me that children, as they have nothing to hide, are less afraid of police. Before we started our campaig towards our new mission, we drew up an extensive programme on how we would conduct the classes with the children’s as well as their parent’s best interests in mind. Once we settled down with the curriculum, it turned to be a fascinating experience for us as we gradually gained confidence of the children as well as their parents. We told them that we too belong to a society in which they are there as members.

The children turned up in huge numbers (went up from 15, the first day to 68 now). Initially they came with their poor parents for them to see what their ward doing inside a CRPF camp area. But soon they started coming all alone without any sort of fear or apprehension and made it a point to spend their late evenings inside our camp. It has been a fantastic combination of play and work for them. Our men took keen interest in helping them doing their home work and to revise the lessons they learned in their schools the same day. Patriotic songs are being taught to  make them chauvinistic and loyal to the country. Occasional cash rewards from me or someone else for properly reciting a poem or telling a multiplication table decisively by anyone often acts as motivational factor for the rest. We have even arranged a small library for them to develop their reading habit and to make them more exposed to the outside world.

Gate way to the outside world

 All of them, though coming to our camp only for few hours, would wear their best cloth on hand and also remains late in the evening to prevent themselves being beaten up by their drunk fathers who would by then get into bed when they are back home. There are few others who are orphans abandoned by their divorced parents and attached themselves to their deprived grandparents or uncles. They are too small to explain to us why their parents have left them. My heart aches when I see their faces.

They are now the part and parcel of our otherwise monotonous life. We are just serving a desperate, hurting community with grace and affection within our limited resources. All festivals are being celebrated together with utmost zeal and enthusiasm. Any happy moment in our family at home is an event to be celebrated together with them by distributing sweets or study materials. Sometimes somebody distributes school uniforms to them voluntarily and sometimes books.  To an armed force member who spends less than three months in a year with their family, these children are like their own family members. Their ecstasy and amuses are like a rejuvenation therapy for all of us which makes us free from stress and strain largely associated with this job.  It’s almost one year now since we started this programme and the progress these children made in their education and also in developing a good rapport among the police personnel is indeed mind blogging.

Work while you work- Play while you play

I simply don’t believe that providing tuition to these children will make them excel in their studies or in that matter make them secure top ranks. But it would be a happy moment for me if I see that a child who fails every subject till yesterday,  gets a pass mark and qualify for the next class. Iam sure the environment they are being put into inside my camp will definitely prevent them from joining a miscreant gang or to any armed resistance movements which are causing devastation in these areas.

There was little resistance from certain quarters when we started this programme due to obvious reasons. They cannot be blamed for that. This hesitancy probably resulted from a general perception among public that police men are to be kept aloof and feared of.  These fears were only exacerbated by well meaning parents who said things like –you never know what those policemen are teaching your kids inside their camp, for which we have a sound reply “any way it is far better than what militants teach them in their hideous  training camps”. Few minutes inside the police camp is not going to harm them in any way as they, at least a huge majority, will never be a potentially lost generation and are at a risk of moving into a life of crime. The last thing I want inside my camp is someone shivering by the sight of our uniform. Protecting a child’s faith and getting a smile in return is what we demand from them.

News came in a regional news paper

Our constant interactions with them took us to a level of understanding the difference between those who “have’ and those who ‘have not’ in our society. We have that instinct in us to think that the poor are solely responsible for what they are. What to say on this?. Iam always bothered about how malnourished these children are and how it will affect their performance in school. It will reduce the child’s capacity to learn when compared with their well-nourished peers. A malnourished child is more likely to fall sick, may take longer to recover and has greater chances of dying. Though the government is doing some excellent work in this area by providing them afternoon meals, is that enough is a question normally being propped up.

Some times while spending my evening hours with these children, I often think, in a society where people judge you by where you live and how many cars you have and where your child is having his schooling, the lives of these children have no value at all. For many from the elite class this may not be an issue as important as others. Even the policy makers, who sit in their air conditioned cabinets and analyses the basic requirements of these downtrodden, wouldn’t be able to judge the profundity of the situation.

This post is neither to poke the conscience of the nation nor to boast what we are doing for these children here in our camp. In our mechanical life it is indeed necessary to stop a while and see few among us belong to the same genetic material are living a life like this, so that we may at least tell our children to not to waste their food. They should be taught that, those left over food in their lunch box could save a few children of their same age group whose childhood has been robbed from them and are dying. And more importantly, to see if there is anything you can do even in a small way like donating clothes, damaged toys of your kids and other waste items which may potentially helpful for them. Those would be few luxury items in their houses.

Iam not an authority to analyze the reasons for poverty and illiteracy I don’t even know whether this is one of the fruits of capitalism or the product of socialism but these children are your future generation and always will be. If these small steps help to elevate their standard of life, then what else we could do better as humans. In an era where the gap between the rich and the poor is widening day by day, will there be a horizon nearby for us to say with our head high…..there is no child sleeping without a meal…?