An experiment in class

One of the parents in the group nudges the woman beside her and asks,incredulously,“Yeh bachchi EWS ki hai?”

On April 12,the Supreme Court upheld the Right to Education Act,2009,which mandates 25 per cent free seats to the poor in government and private unaided schools across the country. But like Chandok’s file tells you,a handful of schools such as Springdales had been taking in EWS children and integrating them much before the government insisted on it.

“We had been taking in 25 poor children under our Integrated Education Scheme every alternate year since 1978. We would go to MCD schools and look for children who could join our class V. They would be selected after an entrance test,trained in English and other subjects for the next two years and then integrated in the regular classroom system. That’s how we got Vansha and many others. But we stopped this scheme six years ago and began taking 25 per cent children in nursery when the government started talking about an EWS quota at the entry level. This year,we got 1,000 applications under this quota and we took 26 children by lottery. Children whose parents earned less than 1 lakh a year were eligible. That was the only criterion,” explains Chandok.

At the passport office in Bhikaji Cama the following day,as Vansha and her mother stand in a queue to submit her application form for a tatkal passport,her father Naresh Kumar speaks about his four children—three daughters and a son—and their dreams,sometimes so seemingly lofty that he has to divide each of those dreams by four and see if his taxi-driving job can afford that.

So in 2006,when Chandok approached Kumar and told him to put Vansha in Springdales,he says his heart sank. “There is a world of difference between them and us. I initially refused,saying,mera bachcha to dab ke mar jayega,” he says. But he relented.

Three of his children now study in private schools under the EWS quota—Vansha and her youngest sibling,nine-year-old Unnati,are in Springdales; Kumar’s 11-year-old son is in Lilawati Vidya Mandir in Shakti Nagar. His eldest daughter,who studies in a government school in Rajinder Nagar,is waiting for her class XII results.

“When I can’t afford something they ask for,I tell them,‘mera ek hi to bachcha nahin hai’ and they understand. They have told themselves that they can’t afford a lot of things and now pretend they don’t need it.”

Like when Vansha speaks about how she doesn’t attend birthday parties of friends in school—“it’s all fake… all hehehe and nothing else. And anyway,what’s there to celebrate? You are only getting a year older.”

This year,Vansha stood first in school in the National Science Olympiad that was held in 7,000 schools across Asia in November 2011.

“She wants to be a doctor. Bechari ko koi facilities nahin de pate (There’s very little we can do for her),” says Kumar,tears welling up in his eyes as he looks at Vansha standing in the queue. She has been telling him how almost everyone in her class goes to coaching classes for the medical and engineering entrance exams,but the Rs 1.20 lakh that one of the private coaching institutes asked for was way beyond his means.

“How much can you ask the school for help? They do everything for us anyway. Koi hamara haath pakad raha hai,hum unka gala to nahin pakad sakte (They are holding your hand,you can’t ask for more).”

Seven years after he put Vansha in Springdales,Kumar says he is still worried if he did the right thing,worried if his children will come out scarred from the experience. But if anything,Vansha has proved tougher than her father could have ever imagined.

So when 12-year-old Kashish Singh,who too got into Springdales under the EWS quota,says she got bullied the only time she attended the birthday party of a classmate,Vansha tells her,“Tell them you don’t care for their parties. Don’t be nervous. Have you seen Maid in Manhattan? There is this boy who carries a paper clip in his hand when he goes up on stage so that he gets over his nervousness. Do that the next time this happens.”

***

“My aim in life is to be an astrophysicist. I don’t think I’ve missed a single episode of Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking,” says Ashwini Kumar Tiwari,15,as he watches Vansha,his classmate in Springdales,go up on stage to collect her certificate for the National Science Olympiad. Ashwini got his certificate too,he stood ninth in school. “I didn’t prepare that well for the Olympiad or I would have done better”.

The watch with the big dial on his left wrist isn’t the only thing that Ashwini has to mind as it keeps sliding up his thin forearm. He knows his father has huge expectations of him and his brother Ashish,who is a year younger but in the same class,“different sections”.

At their home overlooking the Patel Nagar railway station in west Delhi,Ashwini’s father Brij Kishore Tiwari lives his life around a few basic tenets: his daily dose of newspapers,his siddhant (principles) which have always come in the way of his holding a steady job and his dreams for his children. “I wasn’t happy with any of the neighbourhood schools. So my wife and I home-schooled our children till Ashwini was about seven years old,” he says. They finally put the boys in a government school in Rajinder Nagar till Chandok came talent hunting from Springdales and picked both of them for class V.

Tiwari talks of the hard knocks he has had to suffer—his father’s untimely death in Dhanbad,Jharkhand,pulling out of his post graduation in economics from Ranchi University,seeing his dreams of becoming an IPS officer shatter,his marriage to Neelam that the family didn’t approve of,his journey to Delhi with Rs 12.75 in his pocket,the trauma of his younger son Ashish being diagnosed with brain tumour when he was barely three months old,spending the next seven months in RML Hospital by his son’s bedside without a job and never being able to hold on to one. “Meri haalat hamesha hand-to-mouth hi rahi hai,” says Tiwari,who is just one month into his newest job,at the office of the Hog Market Association in Rajendra Place on Pusa Road in Delhi.

“All my life,I will be grateful to two institutions—RML Hospital for giving my son his life and Springdales for giving my sons shiksha (education).”

Through all his troubles,Tiwari has held on to his unrealised dream: the IPS. He now wants at least one of his sons to write the civil services exam. So when Ashwini talks of his little pleasures—drinking cola because he needs “calories to build muscles”—Tiwari worries if he is losing focus. “You talk of becoming an astrophysicist and talk in such an unscientific manner,” he chides.

***

Poonam Biswas is too young to have heard of EWS or even care about the tag. “Yes,EVS (Environmental Science). That is my favourite subject. And math,” says the nine-year-old.

Neither do her friends of class IV D,DPS Mathura Road,who squeeze her in a tight hug and giggle as they pose for photographs during their lunch recess. “She talks a lot in class”… “but she also does her work very well,” they say,with ready quotes about the “star” girl in their class. The ‘star’ raises her eyebrow in mock pride.

“Poonam is a happy child. She came to us in class I from Ibtida Shiksha Kendra (DPS’s afternoon school for the underprivileged) and you can see how confident she is now. Integration is easier at this age because there are no biases—they share their lunch,play with each other. As teachers,we have been told to give them special care,” says Purnima Jain,who taught Poonam math last year.

In a single room that’s the servants’ quarter of a four-storeyed house in posh New Friends Colony in south Delhi,Sukesh Biswas and his wife Archana live with their daughters Poonam and Pooja. Both Biswas and Archana,from Nadia district in West Bengal,work as cooks—Biswas with a family in Nizamuddin East and Archana for the family that owns the house. The house owners’ children also go to DPS,the R K Puram branch.

Biswas came to Delhi in 2000 and Archana joined him a couple of years later. They are clear about what they want now. “We are not going back to Nadia. Schools there teach in Bengali. I studied till class VIII and dropped out. But we want our children to go to good schools and study English,” says Biswas.

Do they find it tough to fit in? “Poonam sometimes makes fun of my English when I teach her. So now I send her for tuition for Rs 500 a month. We don’t pay fees in school,but there are books,uniforms,etc to take care of. That’s not much. Itna to maa-baap kar sakte hain bachchon ke liye.”

Issues of integration-Funding is not the only worry schools have. Many have strong doubts and prejudices over the EWS quota

“This is just between the two of us. My worry is,what if these children develop criminal tendencies? The child sees a beautiful pencil box his parents can’t afford and he steals it,” says the principal of a prominent school in Delhi who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The other problem is of integrating the parents. How can I force my parents (fee-paying) to mingle with these people? So they will stand in groups of their own. Just to give you an example,we have our annual Parents Teachers Association lunch,for which parents contribute. Now what will these parents do? They will either opt out or ask me to subsidise their lunch,which I did last time. And what do I see? They don’t just come themselves,they bring their relatives along. And what about the environment these children come from? Their lack of hygiene—lice in their heads,etc—and they could be carriers of diseases. One of my teachers brought me the diary of a child (EWS)—tum usko choo bhi nahin sakte…tattered,oil stains. How do I explain all this to the government? Now,our school takes children out on educational tours and picnics. If these places are beyond a certain distance,we usually fly,and to places that are closer by,we take Volvo buses or the Shatabdi. These are small children,it’s a tender age,I don’t want them to be put to any hardships and get them to take the train. How will these (other) parents pay? I can’t ask my parents (fee-paying) to pay for the others.”

Strong words,doubts and biases,usually spoken off the record.

The principal of a leading alternative school in south Delhi says,“What is a growing concern is the role we as teachers have to play in bringing the mothers (who may be illiterate) or fathers who may have little or no interest in the issues of the child’s upbringing on the same plane as the school’s ideas of encouraging learning,not beating the child and not ignoring the needs of the child of love,care and peace at home.”

Vinod Raina,a member of the CABE committee that drafted the RTE Act,says many of these concerns are unjustified,“The idea behind social integration is that children from different backgrounds sit together and learn from each other. So these (poor) children can be knowledge providers. They are not to be treated as people who know nothing.”

The other concern is of funding. While most schools agree that the 25 per cent quota in the RTE is a noble cause,they say the government hasn’t charted the course for them.

“Springdales has been taking in children from the poorer sections for many,many years. Now my biggest worry (after the RTE) is not integration—children are children,you need equal opportunities for every child—but if I have to take in 25 per cent under this quota every year,in a couple of years,I will have 750 children who are non-fee-paying. The government has to look at how it can dispense the funds more scientifically. We spend around Rs 45,000 on a child per year and how much is the government reimbursing us? There have been many meetings between the Delhi government and private schools over the Rs 1,160 a month per child that they give for the tuition fee,books and uniform. The meetings are still on,but shouldn’t the government be giving us at least what they give the Kendriya Vidyalayas,which are supposed to be their show case schools? If institutions don’t survive,how will the child survive?” says Springdales principal Ameeta Wattal.

M I Hussain,principal of DPS,Mathura Road,says that while there are several things that are right about the Act and the 25 per cent clause—“it’s noble and long-pending”—there are a lot of holes that need to be plugged. “RTE says these children will get free and compulsory education up till class VIII. But what after that? Where will so many children go? The Act is silent,the government is silent.” The school has taken in 345 children in the EWS category since 2009,when the Act was implemented. This year,60 EWS children joined the school of the total 240.

So while schools talk about the problems of integration,it has been doubly difficult for the children,especially for older ones like Vansha and Ashwini—the pressure to perform,to beat biases,to fit in,simply the burden of dreams. But these pressures have only made them tougher. Ashwini and Vansha are fiercely conscious of the background they come from,even protective. “Didi,please make sure my parents won’t be embarrassed when this comes out. I want them to be proud,” says Vansha.

The build-up to 25 per cent

In 1997,the Delhi High Court asked DDA for a list of private schools that had been allotted land on concessional rates since the ‘90s. There were 265 such schools on the list. In some of these cases,the terms of the allotment letter had specified a 25 per cent quota for children from weaker sections of society. In 2002,the NGO Social Jurist,led by advocate Ashok Aggarwal,filed a petition in the court asking that these schools be told to implement the freeship clause. In April 2004,the Delhi government issued a notification,making it mandatory for those schools that had been allotted land at concessional rates to reserve 20 per cent of their seats for economically weaker sections.

It was around this time that the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Bill was being drafted. The Act,which was passed by Parliament in August 2009,gives children between 6 and 14 years the fundamental right to free and compulsory education. It also says private schools would be obliged to take 25 per cent children from disadvantaged groups from their neighbourhoods.