“It doesn’t matter what subject I am teaching. If I see a use for the laptop, I immediately ask them to start up their machines,” says Sandip Surve (28), who busts every myth about bored teachers in mofussil government schools.

Surve was one of the reasons for picking Khairat, says Bhalchandra Joshi, who is heading the project from Reliance Communications, which is partnering with OLPC as a CSR initiative. “We roamed around and saw nearly 25 different villages and schools, from Talegaon to Vasai to Ambarnath,” says Joshi. Some civic and government schools were approached too, but the response was lukewarm.

“It had to be rural in the true sense but also somewhere that our engineers could reach quickly. Khairat fit our criteria perfectly. And Surve is so passionate about his job, the fact that he knows how to use computers makes it easier for us,” he adds. Also, at 30-odd km from the Navi Mumbai headquarters of the Reliance ADA Group, the location was ideal.

The school is a single room, a pucca structure for which the villagers shelled out some Rs 4,000 a couple of years back. A Mumbai-based philanthropist happened to see the incomplete structure and funded the rest. There is a steel cupboard and a steel bookshelf with glass doors. On the other side stands a steel table with drawers, on which the server-computer sits. There are three plastic chairs and an upturned steel drum to serve as a table for the teacher. The children sit on the floor — all four grades in the same classroom — on plastic mats. There are no desks.

... contd.