Back home, a place he describes as midway between a town and a rural hamlet, 12-year-old Sagar Singh walked at least two kilometres every day to study in a government school. Whenever he thought of bunking school like many of his classmates, he remembered what his grandfather had told him. Education was his only chance to get ahead in life. And so he continued his long walks to school.

Then one day, a teacher in his government school in Uttar Pradesh’s Mainpuri district asked him to take a test for admission to VidyaGyan, a residential school set up by the Shiv Nadar Foundation, in collaboration with the state government, in Dulhera, Uttar Pradesh. The new school, he thought, would put him on the road to college and help him get a job later. For the first time in his life, Sagar felt he had a choice, an alternative to his government school which struggled with the usual problems—missing teachers and dismal infrastructure.

Sagar, who topped his class in the Class V UP Board examination, was recommended for the test by his school to education officials at the district level. Once he cleared the required criteria—a candidate has to be from a rural area, be enrolled in a government school and the yearly income of his parents must not exceed Rs 1 lakh—his name was sent to VidyaGyan along with a bunch of other rural toppers from across 20 districts.

Sagar then appeared for an aptitude test. Once selected, a child doesn’t have to pay to study at the state-of-the art school that’s equipped with basketball courts, football fields and computer labs—luxuries that were out of bounds for Sagar and the 190 other children who now attend the school. The school will fund the students’ education from Class VI to Class XII on CBSE curriculum—the building cost the Foundation Rs 62 lakh and it spends Rs 1 lakh for every child per year.

... contd.