TO GET A HEADSTART
State-sponsored residential schools for backward class children are a big hit
Satvika D., a Class VI student at the new BC Welfare residential school at Keesara in Malkajgiri district, was reluctant to go home when the school broke for Dussehra holidays on September 20. And she wasn’t alone. Classmate P. Kiranmayee too wanted to stay back. The girls are doing well—learning, playing, living carefree lives, in a manner unimaginable back home. Satvika is the eldest of three children of an autorickshaw driver. Kiranmayee’s father is a hamali (porter). They are among 28,560 girls and boys of backward class (BC) families admitted this June to 119 English-medium residential schools of the Mahatma Jyothiba Phule Telangana Backward Classes Welfare Residential Education Society.
Everything the child needs is paid for by the state government here. All that is required of parents is Rs 25 as a refundable caution deposit. Opened simultaneously on June 12, there is one such school in every Telangana assembly constituency. The first set of admissions are to Classes V, VI and VII, each with two sections of 40 students each. “Quality English-medium education helps boost self-esteem and confidence and prepares them to meet bigger challenges in life,” says Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, the brain behind the grand venture. Anticipating a scramble for admission, Telangana’s backward classes welfare authorities conducted an entrance test to pick promising students from BC households earning less than Rs 2 lakh in urban areas (Rs 1.5 lakh in rural areas).
To have all 119 schools up and running from the same day was a gigantic task. “We relied on jugaad when we began scouting for buildings in February 2017. Each school needed at least 20,000 square feet. Only 16 government buildings were found suitable. So, what were once colleges of engineering, education and pharmacy were hired,” says G. Asok Kumar, principal secretary, Backward Classes Welfare.
Everyone chipped in. The prisons department supplied classroom furniture and bunk beds, the handloom weavers cooperative the uniforms. The public service commission and Administrative Staff College of India, Hyderabad, recruited the staff to run the institutions. KCR’s initiative has even impressed the Narendra Modi government, which held a meeting in Chennai on September 11 on ways to extend the initiative to other states. It’s no original concept, though. In 1971, then chief minister (and later PM) P.V. Narasimha Rao had started a similar initiative for SC and ST students. The Telangana Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society now runs 268 residential schools. Among its students is M. Poorna, the youngest girl to climb Mt Everest.
The initiative has its critics too. “It’s just a populist ploy,” says Bharath Mamidi of the Centre for Action Research and People’s Development. “Now all the backward classes will want free education. The state won’t be able to cope with the numbers.”
Everyone chipped in, the prisons department with furniture, beds; weavers with uniforms