No deserting the Rann shala

Updated on: Thursday, June 16, 2011

Cracked brown mud flats, some white, are all you see when you cross Kharaghoda in Gujarat's Surendranagar district. These are salt 'farms'. The white flats are salt crystallised under intense heat. Spread over 500 sq km, the vast and seemingly endless Little Rann of Kutch is home to saltpan workers, or agariyas. Their community moves out of its villages from November to May to the desert to produce salt. The last thing one expects here is a school.

But there are — desert schools, or Rann shalas that have seen 3,000 kids pass Class X state board exams till date.No small feat considering the area is bereft of any basic facility. Rann shalas are the result of a silent revolution over 15 years.With agariyas and their kids away from their villages for seven months of the year, regular school was a dream.

Until Ganatar,an organization for child rights and education co-founded by Sukhdev Patel in 1992, found a unique way out — a model today adopted by governments in states such as Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to cater to nomadic and migrating communities. The idea is to have a school at the 'workplace' and community hostel in the home village for the period that parents are away.

Agariyas move into the desert November to May each year. The period marks production of industrial salt silted in the land during monsoon. This is when children miss school as they accompany parents for the annual harvest.

The community once had more than 70 per cent dropout rates. In Kharaghoda and 17 villages, Ganatar started community hostels for kids to stay on in the village when their parents moved to Rann for salt production. And for really young ones, they set up schools in the middle of the desert.

Rann shalas have been game-changers in a number of ways. The hostels also run courses on cooking, embroidery, beauty treatments, carpentry, electric work, plumbing and computer training that may help the students earn a living in the future.

Ganatar also roped in kids to attract other children to school. "We have a Bachpan Sena or Toddlers' Army. Based in respective villages, they ensure no child is left without education. They even help identify kids for vaccination," said Roopal Rawal, co-ordinator of Ganatar.

"We wanted to show the government that students can be taught in extreme conditions with will and planning. Today, Rann shalas have nearly 100 per cent enrolment," says Patel. Catering to nearly 2,000 children of migratory labourers, these schools today are run by the state government and NGOs for seven months in a year.

Patel's team started working with brick-kiln workers on the Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar highway, and had their goal clear — not to compete with the established system but to complement it."We emphasized on the system invented by Mahatma Gandhi in form of nayee taleem," says Patel.

Times of India

No deserting the Rann shala

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