Proving wrong the perception that Government officials are lacklustre and lacking in ideas, a group of bureaucrats has worked with commitment to change the lives they touch in rural India. The Prime Minister’s Awards for Excellence in Public Administration (2006-2007) given last week acknowledged their initiatives
NISHA NAMBIAR
“It was like giving back to the education system from which I came,” says Pune District Collector Prabhakar Deshmukh. He studied in a Zilla Parishad school and years later as CEO of the Zilla Parishad in Kolhapur in 2002, he ensured that the government’s Rajarshi Shahu Sarvangin Programme to improve the quality of primary education, actually did so.
Deshmukh, along with his deputy commissioner in the state council for examinations Mahavir Mane, involved all stakeholders in the village, drawing out a plan that saw students, teachers, sarpanch, panchayat samiti members, MLAs and MPs working together. The results were heartening—100 per cent enrollment, improved academic performances and innovative teaching methods.
Its success made the Maharashtra Government take notice and convert this model into a Government Resolution last April 26. It is to be replicated in all Zilla Parishad schools in the state.
How did Deshmukh and Mane turn things around?
Well, first they held a workshop for teachers in January 2002 and chalked out a detailed plan for both the holistic development of a child and for improving the skills of teachers.
“People’s ownership for the programme was very important,” says Mane. After being approved by the general body of the Zilla Parishad, the teachers union and the gram sabha, the project took off in June 2002, covering 1,732 Zilla Parishad schools in Kolhapur with the participation of 8,585 teachers and over one lakh students.
There were other initiatives. A pre-test was devised for children and extra classes arranged for weak students. After this, says Deshmukh, it was the teachers’ initiative all the way.
Seeing the teachers take responsibility for their children’s education, the villagers decided to contribute to the infrastructure of schools. Deshmukh remembers how a 65-year-old woman walked up to him and gave him a ladoo in appreciation of the programme and told him that she too contributed to the programme. “She would visit the school and check on the number of absentees and then go to each of their homes and get the children to attend school,” says Deshmukh.
Another time, a few villagers made a cowshed on a school campus near Wadgaon and refused to vacate. So the children and teachers took on the role of anti-encroachment drive officers and got the place vacated in an hour. The MPs and the MLAs did their bit by making the necessary infrastructure available through funds while the mothers of students monitored their nutrition. The programme also roped in 500 ex-servicemen who imparted physical training to schools for an hour everyday.
The efforts paid off. The dropout rate in schools reduced from 7-8 per cent to 1.5 percent and academic performance improved considerably. Deshmukh and Mane now want to see this district’s success replicated everywhere in the state.
