A Blaze On The Dirt Track

By 4 pm—two hours short of the designated time—the children, mostly between nine and 14 years, would clamour to be let off. It was a tough call for the teachers of this non-formal education centre in Calcutta’s Tiljala area. If school was off early, the kids would be made to go to work by their parents. In this poor, crime-infested neighbourhood, with its dirty labyrinthine lanes and the stench of cured leather thick in the air, about 80 per cent of the youngsters are child workers. With tannery jobs being the main source of income, children do several things—from cleaning and beating leather sheets to running ‘chaat’ shops in the tucked-away liquor dens—to prop up their large families. "When we started the school, the idea was to keep the children here for as long as possible so that they wouldn’t be forced to work," says Rajesh Kumar Nonia, a volunteer teacher. The discomfort wasn’t helping.

That’s when Right Track, a Calcutta-based non-profit organisation, stepped in. Earlier this month, they put in four solar-powered lights and fans at the Ambedkar clubhouse. The nine and 12-volt fittings were hooked up to eight solar panels on the roof and functions for the 10 hours that the school runs. Since January, 52 other makeshift schools in some of the poorest pockets of the city have benefited courtesy Right Track. It’s a small gesture that goes a long way. The schools cater to children who would otherwise have remained uneducated. The urgency of schooling them was so great that the coordinators of the various organisations that run these centres settled for whatever they could find: abandoned houses, old clubhouses or the corner of a storeroom to turn into a classroom. Lights and fans were the last thing on their minds. With solar energy, the schools now have access to uninterrupted power.

There’s a very simple reason why Right Track, which is associated with education and healthcare, turned to ventilation and lighting. "The ghost of Kumbakonam never really left us," says project coordinator Ajoy Gomes, referring to the July 2004 incident in which 90 schoolchildren were trapped and burnt alive in a Tamil Nadu school. After the incident, the West Bengal government’s fire department went on an overdrive to check safety measures in the education centres and declared that those deemed fire hazards would be closed down.

Right Track’s 53 beneficiaries would most certainly have been on the list. Conditions at these centres were appalling. Most of them had basic electrical fittings but the power was drawn illegally from the nearest source. So the kids often had to contend with dangling wires and long powercuts besides having to study in the stifling heat.

Right Track doesn’t stop with solar power. Each of these centres has also been provided with fire extinguishers, blankets and buckets and a first-aid kit—along with some basic training for the teachers and at least two local people. Aided by goal, an Irish funding agency, Right Track has spent Rs 20 lakh on its solar power project. By the middle of the year, more coaching centres will be added to the list. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration, then, to say that the 5,000 children at these centres will indeed have seen the light.

Right Track can be contacted at: 11B, Braunfeld Row, Mominpur, Calcutta-700 027. Tel: 2448-5597/6097.