“It was not easy persuading a trained teacher from the Electronics Corporation of India to take up this job in the first place’’ says District Magistrate Dr Rana Avadesh. “After all, dastas or armed squads still roam this place, though the local people have turned away from extremism by and large.’’

He recalls how tough it was to persuade the father of one of the two appointed teachers to let his son take up the job. “It’s no mean achievement that the course has already been extended to its third batch of students in a place like Sikaria’’, he says.

But Mamata Kumari, Class 12 student, isn’t impressed. She travels from nearby Bhemar village to the computer centre in Sikaria. “The train from Patna is often late and the teacher mostly winds up at 1:30 pm to catch the 2 pm train back to Patna,’’ she says. Her classmates Manju Kumari and Preeti point out that they get barely 20 minutes each on the computer daily. Then, there is no internet connection.

For a few months, there were no computers either. The two machines installed in January were stolen in February. Three new computers were installed only in September.

Mamata, Manju and Preeti have more than one reason to complain: electricity was never restored to Sikaria. It came to the village on that same January alongwith Nitish Kumar, piercing the uninterrupted darkness of nine years — or was it 10, nobody is sure. Then, three months ago, there was a shortcircuit and darkness returned — a generator runs the computers.

... contd.