Lighting the lamp of education

This story is yet another generous gesture by my friend Ritu Raj Mate shown to me. He not only gave the story theme to me but also drive me to their house. That’s why I have always insisted this to my juniors where ever I have worked that have one person who knows the city and also the city’s people who can keep providing you stories from time to time. The trust factor is very important because one can be taken for a ride too, by means by the source trying to plant a story to nepotism him or whom he wants to be written about. So first one has to check the credentials of the subject on whom they are going to report about so that it matches that of your sources information. Well anyway after I visited this lady who was self funding her education programe for the underprivileged children, I knew that this story would make to the HT Bhopal Live paper of the Hindustann Times, Bhopal edition, on its own merit.

It’s a story of staunch social commitment as heart-warming as it is inspiring. Denied any Stat aid, a lady in the Madhya Pradesh State capital of Bhopal has been ploughing a lone furrow to shine the light of education on street urchins.
He own failure to make it as a doctor fired a strong desire in Mehraj Nadim to prepare slum kids to make it to the top professional league. She launched a primary school, Legion school in Koh-e-Fiza locality in n1997 to fulfill her dream.
And it’s not run-of the mill education either. Some of he charges have made it to the best schools of the State Capital on the strength of their academic performance. Take, for instance, Serish Iqbal, who was later admitted to the St Joseph’s Convent Girls School on Idgha Hills.
The teachers, all of whom comprise Muslim women, share the feeling that free access to education should be made the country’s policy in order to facilitate nation building.
The academic curriculum in her school in her school has some unique features. “Children are taught four languages – Hindi, English, Urdu and Sanskrit,” she says with obvious pride. “Verbal and written language skills are the key to a successful future,” she says.
Including the hands-on principal in Mehraj, the school has seven teachers; all paid a token sum of Rs 300-500 per month. ‘We’re here top extend a helping hand to Mehraj in her mission. Salary is only incidental,” says Faiza, one of her colleagues at Legion.
The journey for Mehraj and her school began on a humble note. “We had only four students to begin with,” she reminisces. But that was the least of her problems. The slum dwellers were reluctant to send their children to school. “They wanted the kids to start working early for extra income,” she says.
Untiring efforts to convince them was the first obstacle she overcame. Now, the school has on its roll over five-dozen children in different classes. For those in Class IV and V, basic computer training is mandatory.
Despite the wholesale effort, Mehraj is till handicapped by some odds. For one, cash for meeting the school expenses. “While the teachers have been gracious enough to work on paltry honorarium, there are other unavoidable expenses,” she says.
She has to provide them with free books and stationary. Then, there are shoes and uniforms for those children who come from the lowest strata even amongst the slum dwellers. “I have often taken money from my husband to meet the expenses,” the lady -on-a-mission says.
To her utter disappointment, the Government agencies haven’t been supportive enough. “My application for State Government aid has vanished without a trace. I’m still awaiting the Union HRD Ministry’s response to my letter,” she recalls.
The support from her husband, Syed Nadim-ul-Hasan is the best part of the Legion tale. He couldn’t have been more cooperative. “My parents have also chipped in from time to time,” she says, confident that as the school grows, so would the list of benefactors from the immediate family circle.

Clerics opt for E-cards this Christmas

This story was given to me by Father John Neduncheril after he had read an E-card story written by me for the Hindustan Times, Bhopal edition, in 2002 during the Diwali celebrations. So I went to meet him the next day and found the story to interesting of how this year to save cost the sisters of various churches were sending e-cards rather than the traditional cards to their relatives and friends across the globe. After this story was carried in the paper he became a good friend and I got some very good stories later on from him and his fellow friends.

A Global phenomenon has finally caught up with the clerics of the City this Christmas. The Fathers and Sisters of various churches are using e-cards to greet their counterparts and relatives.
Take for example Sister Hakim who was busily penning her message on an e-card and downloading pictures of Santa Claus on the computer to send to other Sisters and relatives down South. Like Sister Hakim hundreds of other sisters all over the City are logging on to famous e-card sites everyday as the Christmas nears, sending out cards by the dozens to their near and dear ones and peer group members throughout the world.
The IT bug has bitten the entire cleric community in the City right from the Archbishop who himself uses a computer, says Father John Neduncherill, who is selecting an e-card to send to his fellow father in Kerala.

Father John of the St Thomas Church says that IT is very good and he has taken a head-start to promote it with in his schools and churches all over the country.
Various e-cards are available with flash mode and it is all very easy to handle, says Sister Hakim. Sister Sukrutha nods in agreement. “Well, I have send at least 35 varieties of cards to various sisters all over the world so far,” adds Sister Hakim with a smile.
Father John says that though he is quite new to the computer (last 6 months), he finds it just great and adds that by just a click of the finger he can get thousands of e-cards to chose from, something that cannot be done in card shops.
Well, e-cards for now have come to stay during the various religious festivals throughout the world over this year’s “Merry X-Mass” would be electronically wished and received.

Dot.com jail in the making

This story I got because of my personal contacts which I had built inside the Bhopal Central Jail administration. They called me to tell me that they have set up computers with internet facilities for the use of the jail inmates. This was the first of its kind in the jails in the country and so I went ahead and visited the jail to know from the inmates on their new hi-tech facility provided to them by the authorities in 2001.

IT would be IT or Dot.com time for the 30,000 odd prisoners in the various jails across the State next year as they get trained to make use of the latest computer technology and the Net. This huge project was initiated by the DG Prisons Shakeel Raza who said that linking the various jails through computers is a better alternative to manual labour dependent and expensive work.
Talking to the Hindustan Times, Raza said that the first phase is to link all the central jails and then later on link the sub jails to them.
The project is costly says Raza and adds that ‘though the Police Head office has shrunk our budget we will go ahead with it.’
Some prisoners who are learning computer operations at the Ass jailer and the jailer’s office within the jail premises say that they are having fun with the computer and have a better opportunity to get a job once they are out of jail without having to pay to learn it.
The jail Superintendent says that even official letter written to higher officers are typed and saved by the jail inmates on computers.

All bio-data’s and old files of the jail inmates are now keyed in and loaded onto the system that would enable anyone around the world to access them.
The cost of the new conference room done up at the jail head quarters has been marginal for the jail department as the total man power came from the jail and only the raw materials had to be bought for them says DG Raza.
The jail department has ambitious ideas of creating a well-stocked CD library so that the CDs are duplicated and used in various presentations made by the state police department and other department within the State.
“The project in very big and we have plans to educate the inmates along with my officers on video conferencing in the near future,” says DG prisons Raza, ‘this will enable all to know each other well and thus reduce the burden of paper work for the officers’. This would also act as a medium for education on various vocations taught in the jail and thus reduce the problem of looking for good teachers, he adds. But there would be checks and balances and filtering too on the use of the computer with internet facilities.