BY 2004 OUR INDIA PROGRAM HAD GROWN FASTER THAN WE HAD EXPECTED. Quick results and rapid growth were needed, given the scale of illiteracy in India. Picture the combined populations of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, all without the ability to read or write, and you have an idea of the size of the work we had cut out for us.
We hired our country director, Sunisha, away from CARE, where she had been working for several years in their education sector. Just as in Cambodia and Nepal, Erin and I had found in India great people who were passionate about education and working in larger aid organizations. We were able to convince them to jump ship because some of these groups were slower-moving than was ideal. Boramy, our country director in Cambodia, told us when he joined that the general belief among foreign NGOs in the capital city of Phnom Penh was that “Cambodians are not yet ready to run their own organizations.” In his case, and in Sunisha’s, we offered them an opportunity not only to drive the car, but to propel it quickly to high speeds.
During her first year running Room to Read India, Sunisha hired a great staff and forged partnerships with several NGOs. She looked for organizations running schools that lacked a proper library and quickly forged agreements to set up over 300 bilingual Hindi/English libraries. Within two years of our start in India, nearly 100,000 children had access to a vast collection of books. Children could read about Gandhi and their country’s struggle for independence, learn how magnets work, or simply enjoy a classic India folktale about a young boy and his desire to one day own the world’s fastest horse.
One of the first places we began working in India was in the desert state of Rajasthan. This section of northwest India is one of the poorest areas in a desperately poor country. As in much of the developing world, the parents and the government have all placed a great deal of faith in education as the ticket out of poverty. Yet, as is too often the case, they lacked even small amounts of money to buy or produce books, shelving, chairs, and desks. As a result, Sunisha and her team had many more requests for new libraries than they could possibly handle.
They said yes to as many schools as possible. In Rajasthan’s capital of Jaipur, Room to Read formed a partnership with a local NGO named Digantar to set up reading rooms in five government primary schools. The children were enthusiastic, and the new facilities proved popular. Plans were made to increase the size of the collections, as children eagerly read every title they could get their hands on and desired more and more new titles.
At the end of the first year, as summer holiday approached, several of the parents asked whether the library could stay open. During a community meeting, several of them stated that during the six-week summer holiday their children spent most of their time playing around the village. Wouldn’t it be better if they could also spend some of that free time enhancing their minds?
As happens too often in this world, a bureaucrat found a reason to say no. The school management was reluctant to give the keys to the school to the staff of Digantar, our NGO partner. Granted, they had trusted Digantar and Room to Read to fund and set up the local library, but were now reluctant to allow any outsiders to run the school library. We did not understand the perceived risks. Even if the library had been poorly run during the summer, it was certainly better than having the library shut down. In my mind I ran through visions of that locked cabinet in Nepal back in 1998, and the teachers’ fear of books being destroyed causing them to lock them up in a cabinet.
Fortunately, the brilliant staff at Digantar came up with a solution and found alternative sites. In the village of Kundanpura, for example, they convinced the powers that be at the village temple to be the temporary summer hosts of the library. The entire collection of books was moved from the school to the temple, and children were allowed to read books in the courtyard. This temple, in a central part of the village, was easily accessible to all of the school’s children. Best of all, there was open space outside the temple where children could also play. Thus, for the six weeks of summer holiday the students would be able to exercise both their minds and their bodies.
Within a week, 40 to 50 eager young readers from the primary school were visiting the temporary library each day. The village also had a private school, where those parents wealthy enough to avoid the government school would send their children. Once these students heard about the library from their friends, the morning queue for books got even longer. Soon there were 70 to 80 students coming in each day. The local library, just like the ones set up by Carnegie in the United States, was proving to be a spot where people from different socioeconomic classes would intermingle. There were no barriers to accessing knowledge; in the library, caste, gender, and financial resources were irrelevant.
When the vacation period came to an end, a group of ten students from the private school asked Gajanand, the librarian, if the library would continue during the school year. He shook his head and shared the news that the library would now shift back into the government school, and that the private school students would not have access to it. Complaints filled the air as the students, upset about having this newfound enjoyment of books yanked away from them, lobbied to change Gajanand’s mind. He explained that it was not his decision, but instead lay with the school’s administration, which had proven to be less than willing to think outside the box.
The next day the private school students showed up again and proposed an alternative solution. Perhaps a similar library could be set up in their school. Gajanand, weary of being the bearer of bad news, told them that Room to Read did not typically support the establishment of libraries in private schools.
The students were still not out of options. Perhaps the public school’s library could be opened up after regular school hours. The private school kids could then show up in the early evening, before dinnertime. Gajanand, who by now probably appeared in the students’ eyes like a Rajasthani version of Dr. No, told them that he had a second job, running a neighboring village’s library, during the evening hours.
The students were not finished. The next day they showed up again, this time with a petition. Their letter, which was friendly and fair, requested that Gajanand consider supporting a library at their school or starting a library in the evening hours in their village.
Kundanpura Village
Date: 22 June 2005
Namaste,
Gajanand-ji, we get to read lot of good books in your library. Gajanand-ji, you tell us lots of wonderful stories and also play with us. You teach us drawing as well. Thirty children [from our school] come to your library. Our schools will open from 1st July after the summer vacations, we request you to change the timings of the library to 4pm to 6pm in the evening so that we can also come to the library in the evening after school hours. If you do not change the timing of the library then we won’t be able to read wonderful and good books.
We are hoping that you will change the timings of the library as 4–6 in the evening or open library in our school.
Thank you.
Your obedient students,
Nikhil Karadiya
Suraj Chauhan
Class VII
Gajanand explained that he would have to gain approval from both Digantar and Room to Read for this, and that he was not optimistic about either organization’s willingness to break the rules. Since he was impressed by the students zeal for libraries, he arranged a meeting with the principal of the private school. He too was eager to have a library and offered to make a teacher available to be trained in library management and to assume the same role that Gajanand had in assuring that the library was well run.
Upon hearing about the students and their passion for books, Sunisha and the Room to Read team in New Delhi decided to make an exception to their usual practice of working only in public schools. A large donation of Hindi and English books was made, with the promise of more books in subsequent years if the library was well run. The team at Digantar offered to train the teacher who would be running the library, and to monitor it to assure high quality and ease of access for the students.
In a distant and remote village in the deserts of Rajasthan, a small group of students experienced the benefits of a peaceful and respectful petition, and of perseverance. Our team learned that it’s all right to occasionally bend the rules. And 300 additional students started the school year with access to a brand-new library.