Boraz Ka Kheda village sets example; pools in to develop government school

Rajsamand, Rajasthan: To a question on what sets the government upper primary school at Boraz Ka Kheda apart, its alumnus and sarpanch of Boraz panchayat, Meena Salvi, says, promptly: “It’s the facilities”.

Belying its interior location and absence of a pucca road access, the school has piped drinking water supply, a drinking water storage tank with taps and most importantly, functional toilets.

Creative paintings of Hindi and English alphabets and informative posters on health, scientific concepts and maps dot the school’s four classrooms.

Pramod Singh Charan, the school’s headmaster attributed the school’s development to the interest and involvement of the villagers.

Beginning from the construction of the school structure to the study desks or benches in classrooms to the uniforms and notebooks of students, everything in the school has come from community contribution.

On Thursday, the school held a programme to distribute books and uniforms to the newly admitted students which was also attended by the district education officer.

Parents at the programme

Located about 12 km from the district headquarter, Rajsamand, the Boraz Ka Kheda government upper primary school has 161 students – 72 (45 %) of them, girls.

“Owing to our vicinity to Rajsamand, there are many children who go to private schools from the village. We have held night meetings and challenged parents to send them to our school. We have guaranteed them with good results,” said Charan, who has been working in the school since 1992.

Taking a cue from private schools, the government upper primary school also adopted advertising techniques such as distributing pamphlets about the school’s features in the village.

“What helps us connect with people is that we have helped them with their social problems too apart from school-related ones. When they were facing hassles in opening bank accounts to get scholarships for their children under the chatravriti yojana, we facilitated this process and got account opening forms filled from our school,” said Harish Paliwal, Maths teacher at the school.

Thursday’s programme was well-attended by around 40 parents apart from state education department officials and donors, most of whom own or run marble mining and cutting factories along the highway that connects Boraz Ka Kheda to Rajsamand.

The school which was upgraded from primary to the upper primary level in 2006 was shifted to a new, nearby location with a bigger area.

After the school management approached parents and other villagers for funds to construct a school structure, four classrooms, a mid day meal kitchen and an office room were constructed.

“Some contributed with cement, some with paint while some with furniture and other subsidiaries,” said Mangilal Paliwal, a former sarpanch, under whose tenure the construction took place.

According to rough estimates, the school has got funds amounting to around 3.5 lakh from private donors.

“As per government’s rules, we got only 1.6 lakh to construct a new building which was insufficient. But by encouraging people to pitch in money for their school, we built bigger classrooms and a wider school corridor,” added Charan.

The keenness in construction design is seen in the rainwater harvesting facility constructed in the premises to deal with water shortage in the area.

“We had to raise the height of the building’s foundation to prevent waterlogging. In the raised height, we constructed a tank that would store the rainwater collected,” added Harish.

Non-potable water from the tank, that has a capacity of about 30,000 litres, is now used in toilets and for watering plants in the premises.

Girls queuing to use the school toilet

The school undertakes tree plantation activity every year where around 40 seeds are sown by students and teachers.

While the school stands out with complete infrastructure and full teaching staff, unlike most government-run schools in rural Rajasthan, there are still many unaddressed social issues.

“Out of the 300 families living in our village, 150 are from the Bhil tribal community and many of them have not enrolled their children in school,” said Sohan Gurjar, president, school management committee.

Provision of infrastructure has also not uplifted the state of girls’ education.

“While there are good government as well as private schools here, most girls are still not sent to study after tenth standard. This has to change,” said Salvi, who herself discontinued studying after ninth standard.