The school on an island

A two-kilometer walk across the island took us past homesteads and through scrub and recently ploughed fields. Suddenly three children took off from nearby, running over the narrow path, emerging at a neat bamboo and thatch hut. A bamboo fence ran around it, hemming in a little patch of grass.

A small group of men and women had gathered. The air was expectant. And so it should have been — this was their new, and first-ever, school, which they had themselves built with a little encouragement from some of us and our organization. We took our shoes and sandals off and walked inside the cool, single room where 18 children, including the three who had dashed ahead of us, sat on the floor, holding the first school text books (last year’s syllabi, we were told, the latest had not yet come), slates and chalks. Their ages ranged from four to 13.

There were Mishing tribals, Assamese and Bihari settlers. For the latter, this is home; their forbears had come over 60 years back and settled, making a living from the fields as do their progeny. This is, not surprisingly, in Assam. But it is in Dibrugarh district, home to a state University, the first Medical College and Hospital in the region, a number of colleges, a network of schools and a major centre of tea production. It is reasonably prosperous.

Yet there are literally islands of marginalization, where time stands still, not in a beautiful sense but in the sense of situations which are truly difficult and harsh, where the passage of decades has not improved conditions. These people don’t seem to exist in the natural imagination and daily thinking of people, in government and outside of it.

As Assam goes to the elections barely a month from now, it is important to reflect on this democratic deficit – that after 64 years and many elections at all levels, including the panchayats – we are not able to deliver the basics. Because the truly poor and vulnerable remain no one’s constituency and don’t really count. That is why we need to campaign and mobilize and ensure that their voices are heard and make sure their votes count, for a change.

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Bangladesh’s government appears to be hell bent on embarrassing itself and denting the goodwill it has built up over these past years. I had written in my last column that the antagonism shown toward the Nobel Prize winner and founder of Grameen Bank, Dr. Mohammed Yunus, need to be halted.

The latest news is that Dr. Yunus has been pushed out of his position as head of the bank that he founded. There are what appear to be small accusations about the bank’s functioning and Grameen is challenging it legally.

What is truly amazing is that he seems to have not been given any prior notice, although the pressure was building up. Could this not have been done in a more civil manner, by sending him an official notice with details of the problem so that he could have responded in good time? That is how most governments function. Here the effort is to label Dr.Yunus as guilty even before he has had a chance to challenge the charges.

Clearly Prime Minister Sheik Hasina was in no mood for the rapprochement that people of goodwill had tried to bring about. She probably did not appreciate the fact that perhaps more than her, Dr. Yunus was the face of Bangladesh – described by the influential Daily Star of Dhaka as “the man who brought a Nobel Prize for Bangladesh, and the most celebrated living Bangladeshi around the globe”. Grameen has 20,000 employees and 83.5 lakh borrowers, including many women.

The Star said: “Yunus had started his lone campaign to provide loans to the poor, who had always been overlooked by the traditional banks, from his home village of Jobra in Chittagong. Defeating all sceptics, he not only proved that the poor are bankable, but could turn it into an international movement … With his sheer energy, international repute and style.”

His constituency would have been the parents of the children on the island where we have launched the school. They would have been the biggest beneficiaries.

Sanjoy Hazarika / North by North-east