A simple move to set up a school in NCR’s slums led to India’s first profit-for-all voluntary organisation

Holistic education is one which imparts an applicable set of skills. To do all that a child needs exposure to books—lots and lots of them along with newspapers, storybooks, and educated adults. But does an Indian child, especially he in that impoverished semi-urban, rural and urban fringes, receive all that help? Katha began its journey by asking this simple question. Its inference was obvious—basic, primary schooling in India left underprivileged children with a handful of textbooks (often hand-me-downs with pages missing) and zero exposure to reading. Whom does a child in a family of illiterates, wage-labourers turn to, to know more? Some successfully turn towards Katha, the voluntary organisation which helps India’s underprivileged children through their primary schools, reading centres and libraries. The best bit about Katha is the means they employ to teach the children enrolled with them. You thought education was only through boring text books. Think again, as even illustrated storybooks can be used to explain complicated issues such as nanotechnology, marine biology or trigonometry. As Executive Director of Katha Geeta Dharmarajan points out—what is a subject, if not a story waiting to be told? Today through cooperative action and activism, Katha brings together parents and teachers to boost children’s interest in reading. It brings together the colours of his or her country alive to children across socioeconomic, linguistic and cultural divides—with volunteers and community members. It brings storytelling techniques and expertise to people across age groups. The story of Katha starts some 2,000-3,000 years ago. We do not kid you. The New Delhi-based voluntary organisation derives its vision from the age-old educational traditions of Bharat, a land where learning was a pleasure activity, imparted through stories. “In India storytelling was always treated as the more effective form of learning. There were so many ways of telling a story; through theatre, dance recitals, and puppet theatre. And Bharata Natyashastra encompassed all these. Natyashastra was put in place to take the so-called knowledge of the Gods to humans on earth. We at Katha, have faith in the way in which communication was carried out 2,000-3,000 years ago, which always incorporated a pleasure principle. Learning was not arduous, tedious or difficult,” she adds. Katha began with an idea that students would learn through stories. In reality two kinds of stories—one for leisure and another for learning. The team also decided to source the right kind of stories from across the nation and the world. “Originally I hail from Tamil Nadu. It was there while working as the Director of Indian National Trust of Arts and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and for an orphanage that my duties took to me to the rural sections on a regular basis. There while speaking to children, parents and teachers about education, health care and infrastructure, I always felt that the people carried within them a sense of defeat. They had reconciled to an idea that poverty was a matter of karma. Poverty is not about karma. It is a state that can be alleviated,” she adds. But before she could do more, Dharmarajan shifted to the National Capital Region. Her introduction to Delhi’s municipal schools was through Govindpuri; with its lakhs of people surviving in utter squalor and poverty. The schools she visited there had students who could barely read. It was then that she hit upon an idea of a magazine stocked with fun and informative tales, which made reading so much fun that children would put that extra effort in. In 1988, Tamasha was launched. It was to make stories from across the world come alive on paper, all translated in Hindi. Along with Tamasha, Dharmarajan also began the first library for children of Govindpuri (in Dharmarajan’s own garage). By the third issue Tamasha became a hit and UNICEF picked up quite some copies of it, providing a decent profit to Dharmarajan. With that sum (`20,000) and a year-old experience behind her, she officially started Katha on September 8, 1989. Their first project was to start a school at Govinpuri. Parents agreed to send their children to school. “We calculated that between all of us, we could manage 50 children. The parents had given us their consent to send the students. But around five turned up,” she remembers with a chuckle. It was then that this Executive Editor, and visionary, learnt her hard lesson—poor families did not send their primary bread-earners away to school. It was there that we found a figure (`600) which was required to put food on the table for a month. We started to pay the mothers that sum in exchange they would let us bring the children to school. Thus we started,” says Dharmarajan. Bribery was the way out then—presently the way has changed. And how. Lakhs of students are trained by the first batches of Katha schools. These children will one day, hopefully, train several more and the dominoes effect will pull the evil of illiteracy down. One glance through the pages of the website, it is easy to see their innovative methods have worked. Their students have also come back and joined Katha serving as trainees, teachers and accountants. These are people who are breaking the poverty-karma equation. Their dreams combined with Katha’s effort, gives a polish to the dream of India Shinning.