As their names are called on the stage, they struggle to bundle-up a huge bunch of medals together. “Forget it, just carry as many as you can,” a hurried voice tells the two brothers. They rush to the stage, leaving behind some medals in the bag. “We have still left quite a few medals at home. Carrying all the medals would have been too heavy,” 20-year-old Gulabsingh Parshi Vasave says sheepishly.
He, along with his elder brother Bheemsingh Parshi Vasave (21), has won 82 medals till now in various athletic events at the State and the national level.
This week, they travelled more than 400 km to get appreciated by the school which trained them and to express their gratitude towards it at the Satpuda Youth Carnival. They belong to a clan of more than 5,000 students who have passed out from the 13 ‘Jeevanshalas' (life-schools) run by the Narmada Navnirman Abhiyaan in the Sardar Sarovar Dam — affected hilly tribal villages of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh since 20 years.
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The schools have trained tribal children till standard IV in Maharashtra and Gujarat and till standard V in Madhya Pradesh. This was the first time when a get-together of the alumni was organised between November 7 and 9 here.
In the youth carnival, Gulabsingh and Bheemsingh, along with a few others, were hailed as the mascots of development for the many small tribal settlements in the Satpuda ranges.
For Dhankhedi, the native place of the Vasave brothers, they both are nothing less than miracle boys. Rising from abject poverty, today they stay in the State government hostel at Pune's sports training institute and train themselves in athletics, with promising jobs within their reach.
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Asked about their training and studies, all they recollect is the hardships that they faced. They tell how they lived in a one-room thatched home with a big family, how their home used to get blown away by the blowing winds and how it was only last year that a solar light lighted their home.
They said they still have to walk 5 km in the mountains to reach home. “Earlier, we had to walk 40 km, but thanks to the kachcha road being laid till Pimpalkhunta now,” Bheemsingh said.
For both of them, life has taken a twist, albeit for better. And they attribute it completely to the Jeevanshala.
“The whole idea behind jeevanshala was that the schooling system should be a part of the village. It should have community involvement and participation. The Jeevanshala was the first step towards the fight against corruption,” Medha Patkar told The Hindu .
Narmada Navnirman Abhiyaan, the registered trust which runs the schools, also accepts donations from various private contributors and Indian corporate houses.
“The students in the Jeevanshalas do farming, learn about biodiversity of their area. We use Adivasi dialects. Teaching the children in their mother tongue is very essential. We have educated tribal youths who teach the children in Pavri and Bhillari languages,” she said.
She said that the initiative gives opportunities to the educated tribal youths too. “While deciding the syllabus, we had taken help from Krishna Kumar and Anil Sadgopal of the NCERT [National Council of Educational Research and Training]. We also added lot of extra-curricular syllabus,” she said
When asked about her dream for the Jeevanshala, she said, those who studied in the schools should learn further and write tribal history. “They should write their own history. This youth force needs to become a part of the national people's movement. We want these youths to give at least one year to the movement (National Alliance for People's Movement),” she said.
But the statistics do not paint a very positive picture. Of the 4,228 boys and 1,231 girls who have passed standard IV from 13 the Jeevanshalas since 1991, only two have completed higher education. Ten of them have become graduates, whereas 13 have gained diplomas.
The drop-out rate is very high. Those working in the region for years attributed it to poverty. “They do not want to spare their children for school because then they do not have anyone to help them in the agricultural and livelihood activities,” Professor Sham Patil said.
The drop-out rate escalates further in case of girls, who have to handle the additional responsibility of taking care of the house and the siblings.
The Jeevanshalas face lot of problems. The most important being the issue of recognition. After running the school without government recognition for so many years, all that the Jeevanshalas presently have is an assurance of recognition.
“Right now, there is no recognition to the Jeevanshalas. Every year, we have to seek permission of the Education Department to allow our kids to appear for Standard IV exams. This year, State Ministers Patagrao Kadam, Rajendra Gavit and Padmakar Valvi visited the area and promised that the schools will get recognition soon. The State government has also recommended our schools to the Tribal Development Board in Delhi. But that proposal has been pending since a year-and-a-half,” Ms. Patkar said.