A day in village Amriti, Malda – Lakhon mein Ek campaign in the ground

Imran Nadab an energetic young boy no more than 8 years of age, clad in shorts and dirty vests, a catapult dangling from his fingers, is surprised to see us in his neighbourhood. ‘Sir’, he shouts looking at my colleague, Mahaprasad Dutta, one of our cluster coordinators in English Bazar block of Malda district in West Bengal. Prasad asks him whether he has seen some ‘dadas’ and ‘didis’ conducting any survey since morning. He doesn’t answer, but turns around and waves us to follow him. Negotiating many sharp bends with great alacrity, through a maze of lanes and by lanes, he briskly brings us to a shanty where a group of 3 didis and a dada, surrounded by many children and elders are in the midst of testing couple of children.

This morning 6 didis and 2 dadas, are busy surveying all school going children in Std 3 to 8 and in case of out of school children aged 7 to 14, in every household of Nadab para of village Amriti in English Bazar block. They are the Lakhon Mein Ek village volunteers of Amriti and have split themselves in 2 groups of four.

Amriti, about 10 kms from Malda, is situated on either side of a state highway. With 4000 households spread across five paras it is one of the largest villages of the district. The eight have already finished the household survey in Bodo Mohon para and Choto Mohon para. Over the next couple of days they will be able to finish Nadab para and Momin para. Sabji para will be done the last.

Piu Mondol, Moushumi Mondol, Dolly Mondol and Bikram Saha of Bodo Mohon para, all in Std 12 are conducting the survey in the shanty to which Imran has lead us. All households in Nadab para speak a language called ‘Khotta’ – the locals call it ‘Khutta’. The language is a mixture of Hindi, Urdu and Bengali. The district of Malda borders the states of Bihar and Jharkhand, which lie to its North West and South West respectively, hence perhaps the mixed language. The children, however, are being tested in Bangla because that is the language they learn in school.

Soumen who is in Std 7 and aged 14, is being tested on his reading skills, when we join the group. He is completely silent, which is noticed by a lady going to fetch water. ‘I am not surprised that he cannot read’, she quips aloud ‘this is all due to examinations being scrapped. The teachers have stopped teaching now. They are now promoting children without even knowing who is learning and who is not’. Soumen also fails the subtraction test, but recognises the numbers.

Luckily before the debate intensifies into a free for all amongst the elders in walked Sameer, also aged 14 and in Std 7. He read the text fluently, but could not solve the subtraction problems.

Prasad and I head for Momin para, where Jaya Mondol, Shipra Mondol, Preeti Mondol and Ashok Mondol are conducting the survey. Barring Preeti, who is in Std 11, the others study in Std 12. They have just finished testing Atiul Momin, who seemed to have been unable  to read and compute subtraction. When we reached the spot, a visibly agitated Atiul was seen to be making a case for himself, ‘..but you gave me the subtraction in Bangla, you did not use English’. I butted in and asked Atiul whether he did not do mathematics in Bangla in school? He said yes, ‘but at the tuition they use English’. I gave the subtraction sums in roman numerals. I am glad to report that he solved both without much ado! Lamentably, despite being 8 years in school, and attending a private tuition class, he struggles with the reading text!

I ask all 8 village volunteers on how did they hear about the Lakhon Mein Ek campaign and what prompted them to join. They all go to the same private tutor in Malda, where they heard about the campaign. Curiosity to know about the learning status of their village led to their joining.

Altogether 60 of them from the tuition centre have volunteered to survey almost 140 villages in English Bazar block. The survey is almost over now.

When I ask them about their experience of joining the campaign. They almost reply in unison – ‘we knew that the standard of learning was not good, but we could not imagine that this is so bad!’

Talking about their immediate future plan, they want to plunge themselves in helping their young brothers and sisters of their village to improve their reading and mathematics skills, immediately after their scheduled board examination in March 2016 and hope that Pratham will help them to achieve this.

Blog originally posted on the Lakhon mein Ek Blog