BEHIND THE MISSION
Reforming education through community initiatives
The concept and the mission of ‘Vidyacharcha Kendra’, now spread over several villages in West Bengal, India as the ‘Community Pathshala’ was not planned or engineered with any preconceived ideas or notions. It is an evolution that stemmed from sustained efforts for some years to serve the educational needs of children in rural and tribal areas. The seed was sown in 2014 when Sutanu Bhattacharya initiated a small activity unit at his residence in Phuldanga, a village near Bolpur in Birbhum district of West Bengal.
Sutanu Bhattacharya, an Economist, Cost Accountant, and Operations Researcher was born on 23 July 1953 and retired in 2013 as a professor of Economics from the University of Kalyani, after teaching there since 1978. He also served for a brief period (1983-84) as a covenanted staff at Chloride India. Later he served as a Joint Secretary, University Grants Commission, India (1996-2001), heading its Eastern Regional Office. A student of Ballygunge Govt. High School, Kolkata (1971), Bhattacharya studied Economics at Jadavpur University and was first in the first class earning gold medals at both the undergraduate (1974) and postgraduate (1976) levels. He obtained a Ph.D. (1993) from the same University. He qualified as a Cost Accountant from the Institute of Cost and Management Accountants of India (1981) and as an Operational Researcher from the Operational Research Society of India (1983). Several scholars obtained their Ph.D. under his supervision. He also published a number of books and research papers.
Vidyacharcha Kendra, in its embryonic stage started with some tribal children from Phuldanga and the nearby villages of Kolapukurdanga and Taltore. Maya Deheri, a resident of Phuldanga, took the initiative to bring them. Asha Murmu, and Laxmi Hembram (Soren) took the responsibility as their Didimonies or the local educators to help the children study.
But many pedagogical hurdles of formal education were faced. The initiative kept on stumbling over those — what to teach, how to teach, who will teach and what will be the medium of instruction. Faltering and stumbling in the initial years on these issues, by 2018 a method and a system of education in the form of ‘Community Pathshala’ evolved, with the motto — we learn and help our children learn, which gives the children an opportunity to learn in a homely ambience. Over the years appropriate lesson plans and study materials for learning Bengali, Mathematics, and English were also developed.
Equipped with a method of education and appropriate study materials, the concept of Vidyacharcha Kendra evolved as a low-cost replicable model of education for the rural communities. Since 2017 some enthusiastic students and colleagues of Sutanu Bhattacharya gave it the shape of a mission when they individually started to spread it in some districts of West Bengal. Goutam Dey, Arun Kumar Agarwal, Ashoke Kundu, Dhiman Das, Debatra Dey, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Anirban Mukherjee, Amrita Choudhury, Senjuti Gupta, Archita Ghosh et al. are all well-established in life. But this was a call from within and the journey began.
