The concept of an ‘Education City’ in the restive Dantewada district of Bastar region swarmed by heavily armed Maoist ranks was unthinkable in the bureaucracy across India just three years back.
However, a young 2005 batch IAS officer OP Chaudhary, who was the then the Dantewada District Collector, still believed education was a potent way to end the scourge of Maoist insurgency in the region.
Choudhary’s bold efforts paid off at least in the direction of making reach of education possible in the restive Dantewada region — and that too in a mammoth way with the realisation of the concept called ‘Education City’ which is under development as a mega project in the district.
The reward followed later and that too at the national level. Today (April 21, 2013), Choudhary, who is currently posted as Director, Public Relations of the Chhattisgarh Government, received the most coveted Prime Minister Award for his innovative thought on the occasion of ‘The Civil Service Day’ in New Delhi for the year 2011-12 by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh himself.
Choudhary’s innovative idea is actually taking shape in the form of ‘Education City’ at Dantewada now, the centre of Maoist insurgency —
something he had envisioned during his tenure as District Collector. It may be noted that 67 per cent of the Bastar region is densely forested and around 70 per cent of the population in the region is tribals.
There is less land for farming resulting is meagre paddy cultivation which is dependent on the monsoons. During the past decade maximum number of Maoist insurgency incidents have taken place in Dantewada where the insurgents went about demolishing schools and ashram shalas (boarding schools).
Since the insurgents destroyed schools, there were none of them operational. It was a challenge to revive the schools in the restive region.
In 2009, the Dantewada District Administration started putting up Pota cabins in the remotest pockets of the district to establish new schools.
The Pota cabin schools held classes for Standard I to VIII and children were provided free food and other necessary items. Currently there are 27 Pota cabin schools operational with 21 other coming up in the district.
In 2011-12, an estimated 11,000 children were re-registered for the schools with arrangement even made for accommodation of teachers. Each Pota cabin school had a satellite television with medical check-up done through the visit of a medical van.
To generate interest in schooling among children from far flung areas, a ‘Tamanna Express’ was launched for making children aware of the doing of the district administration through the concept of ‘Education thorough Entertainment’.
Every day 150 children were brought from far flung areas through the ‘Tamanna Express’ to the Dantewada district headquarters. The children in the district headquarters had the opportunity to meet senior officials and also visit a ‘Science Museum’ and watch films.
An ‘Astha Gurukul’ was also opened for the children of Maoist insurgency affected families through which the district administration got 25 per cent of seats reserved for these children in public schools of the district.
The district administration also dealt with the
problem of dropouts — most of girls after Standard 8th.
In 2010-11, there were 38,000 students in schools in Standard 8th which fell to 5,116 between Standard 9 to 12.
To tackle the problem, the district administration opened a total of 13 residential schools in the district.
In the meanwhile, the district administration opened the ‘livelihood College’ in Dantewada which is the only college in the country for the ‘unemployed’. There is no pre-qualification required to seek admission in the college.
The Dantewada district is now rightfully the upcoming ‘Education City’ and the KPMG had already named it among the world’s 100 innovative projects where an ‘Educational City Hub’ being developed by the State Government would house 5,000 children in an area of 97 acres comprising a total of 13 educational institutions under construction and being built at a cost of `100 crores.