Bastar villagers want government to take over school abandoned by Reds

RAIPUR : Once, Mao's 'Little Red Book' was the syllabus here. Today, children learn tables in the shade of a mango tree or in one of the sheds abandoned by Maoists when they retreated. In this extremely remote part of Abujhmarh in Bastar , this no-walls school is the only hope for hundreds of kids.

When the Maoists' word was law, their so-called ' Janatana Sarkar ' ran 'schools' to impart Maoist ideology to children. When security forces began piling on the pressure, Maoists began fleeing their erstwhile strongholds. This school is in one such region of Narayanpur district, some 300km from Raipur.

After the insurgents moved out in 2016, the school lay abandoned for years until educated youth volunteered to teach children of primary school age. They named it Bhoomkal - after the 1910 tribal uprising against the British.

Villagers from 12 panchayats now want the government to take over the school. They met the district collector on Friday and handed over a memorandum, demanding the school be affiliated to the state board and its volunteer teachers be absorbed as ' shikshadoots '.

TOI had visited this very school a couple of years ago. What was left were sheds with rickety structures that once held up planks to serve as benches. Villagers were wary to talk to outsiders, afraid that Maoists have eyes and ears in the forest. After all, the school had seen the Salwa Judum days. Covid gave it a new lease of life. When educated youth returned during lockdown, they were worried their children would miss out on schooling. Some of them began teaching. Village panchayats pay salaries and arrange for books.

Bhoomkal now has 115 students from Class 1-5. In fact, it had 400 students till four months ago but attendance plummeted after a major encounter in nearby Rekavaya.