the weblog of sriram varadarajan.

This is the way we go to school.

The train to Hyderabad was moving at a snail’s place. My eyes followed a bunch of 4 to 5 kids walking barefoot in soiled school uniforms, with bags clinging on to their backs. They walked through the puddles and slush that the rains had left behind. As the train came to a halt, I could see them slowly disappear into the distance, making their own road as they walked. Probably a shortcut, I thought.

But then, probably not. I have visited quite a few schools in villages in Rajasthan and it is tough to be a student there. Right from the distance that you have to cover every morning… to making do with a school that has no toilets, no classrooms, no electricity and at times, just 1 teacher for 4 batches. It’s a tough life… and with the quality of education that they get, let’s not talk about the motivation and inspiration to study!

Let’s do this. Let’s all travel across our respective states and follow a kid’s journey to his school and if possible, attend school with him for a day. Let’s record it and document it somewhere. Upload it on to a site that just has a zillion of these videos from across the country. Just an experiment… an experiment that will probably give life to the numbers and statistics that we read in our papers about the state of primary education in our country. And in the process, maybe we can figure out ways in which we can change or pressurize people to change a thing or two in these schools.