By Ananda Mohan Ray
It was the early fifties (1953 or so) when I dropped out of school in second grade. My days were happily sailing away selling green coconut at Chalna Bazar in East Pakistan, tending the cow herd in the fields, and catching fish in the river on our family boat. But, this carefreeness did not last long. My family was soon moved to the Sundarbans West Bengal Government’s Refugee Rehabilitation Department.
At the time, Sundarban was sparsely populated and the lands were mainly possessed by landlords. The land – mostly wild forests – was deforested by the landlords laborers who hired from poor families. These people settled in Sundarban with a hope that someday they would receive a part of the recovered land as their own. Year after year, that hope was forgotten.
The West Bengal Government abolished the landlord system and distributed the recovered land among these landless laborers, but no land was left for the refugees. So, my family and I were shifted 15 kilometers north to Debipur. At this time I was admitted to Baikunthapur Primary School in fourth grade, the only Primary School in this vast area. It was run by three teachers and a headmaster with an eighth grade education. Yet, he was considered the most educated person around the area. His qualifications were an atomic concern.
The headmaster provided me shelter for two years where I continued my education in their Junior High School. I appeared for a scholarship exam for Jr. High school students and received an honorarium of Rs 5/- a month up to tenth grade. Having exhausted Debipur of its educational resources, I left Sundarban in 1959 for further studies.
I came back to Sundarban in 2010 to attend a marriage ceremony of an acquaintance that stayed at our Calcutta residence for his higher education. I was surprised to see the changes that had taken place during this 50 year period. Debipur was densely populated. The village teemed with highly educated people. Girls outnumbered boys in schools!
All the available land was used to cultivate multiple harvests, indicating that people were not starving. However, one glaring observation I made was the sheer number of educated but unemployed youth in the village. In fact, some of these youth completed their education staying at my residence in Calcutta. Wandering around with no constructive job, these youth engaged themselves with odd jobs like Barefoot Doctors, LIC agents, contracting, and helping hands at fields and became easy prey for political parties and brainwashing.
Any local youth seeking teaching jobs eventually preferred to relocate their families into the city, causing the education in Debipur to suffer. It has created a cycle of people getting degrees only to be unemployable.
I always longed to return to my village. For the last 30 years, a one-fourth acre plot of land had been sitting quietly in Debipur. Thoroughly enjoying retirement, my wife and I decided to build a vacation home with 2 big bedrooms, a verandah, a bathroom, and a kitchen. During my visits, the youth in the village suggested that I start a Nursery and KG school with the hope that their children wouldn’t fall prey to the same fate as them. Excited by the idea, we gathered and registered an NGO “Debipur Pragati” in Feb 2011, under which we developed the “Subhechha” KG School, which carries the name of my daughter and the wishes of parents who hope for a better future for their children.