chroma thoughts...:)

This is the second year I am working with Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) Schools and this journey of working with various stakeholders - headmasters/ headmistress (HM), teachers, parents, community members, resource persons, students - has been quite enterprising. My kind of work as a Gandhi Fellow in standardization and strengthening of school processes requires time and availability of all of these stakeholders in various proportions, a maximum of that being with the HMs and teachers. And thereby, i can't stop to think of the never ending yet ever increasing documentation work the HMs and teachers have been burdened with. With the teachers receiving a new circular almost every day, the time they are forced to invest in Mahiti work is like never before. It started with the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme which was started this academic year (2017-18) to directly transfer the amount incurred for buying uniform and stationary to the students' bank accounts. ...

“Your’e quite disturbing to be around.”  “You brood a lot”. “You don’t participate”. “You’re not fun”. “This indifferent nature is quite redundant”. These are the other occasional dialogues that come along. Actually I can be a lot more disturbing person to be around, than you imagine to be. When anxiety creeps in, its like going berserk in the inside. One can’t really explain how that is. There’s a surging need to scream out loud. But hush… There are people around. As a matter of fact, I’m saving you guys from experiencing the outlash of it, with that attitude. That’s how I try to keep calm and composed. That’s how I hold myself in. Brooding.  “Did you go to _______________ alone?”  Yes, I go to the movies alone. I go to restaurants alone. I go to lot many other places alone. I do a lot other things alone. Once upon a time I too used to judge myself for this. But later, it came out to be one of my greatest strengths. I believe the capacity to do things al...

Violence is a central concept for describing social relationships among humans, a concept loaded with ethical and political significance. The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines as “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.”  Yet, the most common form of violence I observed in context of the schools and communities I work with is Non-verbal violence, commonly termed as verbal abuse, which encompasses a relatively large spectrum of behaviours, including: accusing, undermining, verbal threatening, ordering, trivializing, silencing, blaming, name calling, overtly criticizing and also verbal violence disguised as jokes.  Here, I would like to share the discussion we had within our debrief group on the importance of Education for Peace in the sc...

Pragat Shaikshanik Maharashtra ( PSM ) is an initiative of the Maharashtra State Government towards an educationally progressive Maharashtra. The RTE Act of 2009 came into effect in the nation on April 1, 2010. In Section 2, clause 3 of the Act, it states that all children between the age group 6–14 years are entitled to receive quality education. Annual status of education (ASER) 2014 survey showed that majority of children in Maharashtra cannot read basic sentences. Considering the statistics, only 27% class 8 students could read a basic text and 31% could divide numbers, in the State of Maharashtra. The state level assessment tests by the Maharashtra State Council of Education and Report (MSCERT) by the year 2014 revealed that the average reading skill of class 5 children was 51% and Math skill was 53%. Alarmed by the situation, the Department of School Education and Sports, Maharashtra released a Government Resolution (GR) on 22nd June, 2015 aiming for ‘Educationally Progressi...

Hello everyone!   Project Utthaan is an initiative to set up reading spaces and a book reading culture in Thane Municipal Corporation schools. Phase One of the campaign found success in setting up library in TMC School No: 03, Yashodhar , Thane. Moving ahead, Phase Two the project will be undertaken three Gandhi Fellows namely Ashik Krishnan, Chandrani Roy, Debabrata Saha to organize library and the associated processes in 17 TMC Schools they work with. The 17 schools includes 10 Marathi, 3 Hindi, 2 Urdu, 1 Gujarati and 1 English medium school.    A physical library is non-existent in most of these schools and lack in space, infrastructure and money to afford the luxury of one. While some schools have enough books, some have a few and some don't have any. Considering the student strength of each school and the number of existing books, we are targeting to achieve 2000 Marathi, 1000 Hindi, 400 Urdu, 50 Gujarati and 500 English books and provi...

Friends, co-enablers and countrymen! I am putting up this post to mention the immense thanks I have towards each one of you who supported the campaign till date and also to solicit your further support and hand holding in achieving greater ideals. As you know, the aim is not just to set up libraries or reading corners in underdeveloped schools, but to provide a learning environment for our kids that embarks the creativity in them. Moving ahead, three of us; Chandrani Roy, Debabrata Saha and myself will be working on to set up libraries and the associated processes in 17 of Thane Municipal Corporation schools across various mediums of Marathi, Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati and English. While some of the schools have enough books, some have a few and some don’t. While some have its own reading space, others don’t. Considering the strength of the school and the number of books the schools already have, we have put up the following target. We are looking out for children’s liter...

TMC School No: 03.Yashodhar, Thane Working with the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) schools as a Gandhi Fellow has always opened up multiple learning opportunities for me. It was a revelation upon experiencing the non-existence of libraries or reading corners in the schools I worked with. When I think about it, library and books have been part of my life since childhood and have had a major role in the development of my thoughts and perspectives. It was in December 2016 that I started an online campaign to set up a library in TMC School No: 03, and English medium school located in Yashodhar, Thane. Since then, I had been receiving books from my friends and a few unknown well-wishers whom I address as my co-enablers in the process and conducting book reading and story-telling sessions in the school. I had been carrying different books with me during each of my visit to the school and performing these sessions in different classes. The books The major constraint i...