நம்நாட்டின் விரைவான முன்னேற்றம் பணி நிறைவு பெற்றோர்வசம் உள்ளது !

THE ECONOMIC TIMES < on Saturday - 12, July, 2013

Old Testament Survives Well in Young India
India would grow much faster if retired people helped improve skills of the young
 

Rear Admiral (retd) Harish Malhotra is  78 years old,silverhaired and bursting with energy and strong opinions,both of which he expends with equal vigour,as he walks along the winding paths inside the Noida park beside the Okhla bird sanctuary,every morning without fail.But what makes him special is that he is a subversive.What he subverts is the conventional notion of the demographic dividend.And his prime instrument of subversion is a school he has organised in the park for the children of nearby slums and villages,the Gyan Shakti Vidyalaya.The GSV styles itself as a school after school and offers children,mainly from the nearby slums on the banks of the Yamuna,supplementary education.In fact,their primary enrolment in some government school or the other itself is the result of encouragement from the GSV. 

The Vidyalaya runs inside the park,in the open.Mats on the ground in front of a blackboard define a class.Another cluster a few metres away is another class.When it rains,all classes mingle into a milling crowd on the sheltered premises of a mazaar inside the park.

The park is large,verdant,home to birds,butterflies and an occasional snake.Mayawati found it appealing enough to appropriate,to build a pink,stone memorial to historical figures of depressed caste empowerment.Domes,elephants and giant statues took over two-thirds of the park,and shut out morning walkers.They still had the one-third she had spared.In that,in a large depression towards the boundary near the DND Flyway,the still-life of flower patches and palm trees amid occasionally mowed grass comes alive with groups of children in uniform,songs sung in unison,the unmistakable,ringing authority of schoolteachers in flow,answers shouted out in triumphant excitement and the swarming sound of children at vigorous play.    

 நன்றி -- TK ARUN, New Delhi, 

The Economic Times, 13-07-2013