1368 selections in Eklavya and other Special Residential Schools and 98 selections in Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya.

1368 selections in Eklavya and other Special Residential Schools and 98 selections in Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya.

We are delighted to share that 1368 (380 boys and 988 girls) children from our Seva Kutirs have been selected for Special Residential Schools (Eklavya, Kanya Shiksha Parisar and Model Schools) in 26 districts of Madhya Pradesh and one district each in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. These schools cater to children from the Scheduled Tribe communities.

It is notable that out of total available seats of around 9000, such a number has been selected.

To our mind, this is a fairly striking achievement given the fact that at the time of application for the examinations we had Seva Kutirs in about 1100 villages / hamlets, there are many bigger villages and towns / cities, and presence of a comparatively privileged slice too among the tribal communities who certainly stood a better chance than the ones whom we cater to.

We also did the application process for each candidate and also prepared some additional children in villages where we did not have Seva Kutirs through our short-term Crash Programs. Quite a few of them have also got selected.

It has been an arduous and exacting exercise which entailed application process (preparation and submission of documents – which are not ready in most cases), taking children to nearly 100 examination centres through arranged means of transport, and of course the ’round the year’ preparation.

These Special Residential Schools have an average annual budget of nearly Rs 1.25 Lacs per student. Our children will be admitted into Class 6 and for the following 7 years (till Class 12 i.e. Higher Secondary) will continue in these institutions.

This too is noteworthy that in tribal areas High Schools and Higher Secondary Schools become very far as the RTE ends at Grade Eight level and these areas are sparsely populated with woefully scarce means of public transportation. Hence a significant dropout happens after Grade Eight Admission in such residential schools helps stem that.

Also, 98 of our children (52 girls and 46 boys) also made it to Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (JNVs) – CBSE residential schools run by Central Government. Since they are for all sections of the society (not just ST communities) reserved seats for us were around 500 only. Stupendously enough, some of these 98 (though belonging to ST community) made it in Open (which is also called General) category by scoring more than the cut-off marks required for that.

More than 10 children also made it to Gyanoday Schools (these schools are limited in number that have greater provision for Scheduled Castes) and Krida Parisars (Sports-focussed residential schools.)

The performance of girls, in particular, attracts notice. We have always believed that our Seva Kutirs are powerful spaces for gender equity in areas where female literacy rates are among lowest in India, and early marriage is a commonplace phenomenon.

Our Seva Kutirs are functioning in some of the most far-off and backward tribal areas. A good number of these villages are such that there is no approach road and one has to walk a considerable distance to reach them – in some cases a few miles.

Just to place this in another perspective – this achievement is equivalent to setting up a residential school for around 1500 children – since we run residential institutions ourselves we know that would take tens of crores of rupees for infrastructure and similar amounts every year as running expenditure.

One point of clarification – Kanya Shiksha Parisars (admission into which are through Eklavya exam) are only for girls. So girls number would always stand a chance to be greater.

In JNVs, though there is no seat reservation for girls yet there are different cut-off marks in each district for boys and girls. So some gender-based benefit for girls is there.

(This particular achievement is dedicated to our Eternal Uncle, Pratahsmaraniya Shri Ramesh Kacholia ji, a father-figure to us (as to countless others) since 2004, who first reposed faith in the concept of Seva Kutir when there were not even ten in number (in 2018) and inspired us to set up hundred centres, and then cross thousand. We have 1142 Seva Kutirs at present serving 70 thousand children.