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Attention!
Stand at ease!
Attention!
Stand at ease!
Attention!
Historically, the marginalized people,
you call them as untouchables or Dalits,
they have been kept away from the center of the knowledge.
Once you are born into a caste,
it is very difficult for you to grow beyond that.
You are stuck in that identity.
Education is the best way of liberating them.
So that's how I chose to work in education sector.
The kind of education that
we are giving to the marginalized people
is going to change
not just the fate of these communities in Telangana,
but it is going to be the source of inspiration,
a source of hope, for all the marginalized in this country.
The greatest plight in India is the system of caste.
For generations of Indians,
the social code known as the caste system
has defined how people earn a living
and whom they marry.
Although outlawed seven decades ago,
castes remain a significant factor
in deciding everything
from family ties and cultural traditions
to educational and economic opportunities.
Dalits, people who are on the lowest
rung of the caste system,
constitute almost one-fifth of India's population
of 1.3 billion.
Not able to afford the high tuition of private schools,
many are forced to attend government-funded institutions,
which in the past
have suffered from poor infrastructure,
lower education standards
and high student-to-teacher ratios.
But Dr. Praveen Kumar is trying to change that.
I'm currently working as you know
head of Telangana Social Welfare Residential Schools.
So totally about 400 schools I manage,
they're all residential schools
for the students who are historically
marginalized, but talented and then poor.
Of them, 60% are girls and then 40% are boys
because girls are more marginalized
among the marginalized.
Their voices are always suppressed.
My approach to improve
the conditions in the schools has been
put your eyes and ears on the ground always.
Talk to the parents,
talk to the teachers,
talk to the students, you know.
Stay in the schools and then understand their problems,
their challenges,
both in classrooms and in the corridors and the dorms.
Then go to the dining halls
and see what kind of food they're eating
and then go to their homes
and then what kind of food they're getting
and what kind of challenges their parents have.
One of the important changes
that I brought in after I took over
was to complete the transformation
of mother tongue to English medium,
because English medium, as I said,
English is the language of emancipation
and language that connects you
to the whole body of knowledge in the world.
So we had to train a lot of teachers.
Refer to the dictionary also, OK,
and find out the new meanings.
Hey Rachita, how are you?
Hi Sindhu, fine thank you and how about you?
I'm fine too, it's been a long time...
Identity is extremely important.
There is a scientific evidence to prove that,
you know, your sense of identity is
extremely crucial to your growth
as a successful human being in your life.
If you accept an identity which is very humiliating,
which reminds you of very painful past,
I think that identity will not help you to grow.
I'm not saying that we should forget your past.
I'm not saying that.
But that should not be the bubble
in which you must live always.
SWAERO is an alternative identity.
S stands for the state.
W stands for welfare. Aero. S,W and then aero is SWAERO.
So the idea is that your dreams have to be skybound.
So, that is what we are trying to achieve
by changing the identities like, you know,
you say, I'm a SWAERO, and I aim to be a doctor.
I'm a SWAERO. I aim to be a top-notch engineer.
I'm a SWAERO. I aim to be a top bureaucrat of this country.
I'm a SWAERO. I want to be a very good actor
or, you know, musician in this, you know, world.
So, these are the positive images
that are associated with identity.
Just to give an example to you.
See, in 2012, in our institutions,
we used to produce about six doctors per year.
But because of this self-liberating ideology
of SWAEROism,
we have this year,
we have produced about 189 doctors.
This is phenomenal for any poorest of the poor people.
You know how difficult it is
to get into a medical colleges in this country?
So but today,
because of this ideology,
the students have been able to achieve this feat.
Pujita has been a farm laborer.
Her parents themselves
have been agricultural laborers,
and then this girl used to sell vegetables,
but thanks to the residential education institutions,
she came to the Gowlidoddi campus
and then she toiled very hard for one year
despite many problems.
And today,
I'm so happy to share with you
that you know she is, she has joined
one of the prestigious medical colleges
in the state of Telangana, Osmania Medical College
and then in future,
she hopes to be a gynecologist,
so this is the journey our children are hoping for.
Similarly, the Mount Everest expedition,
Mount Everest expedition,
we were, we are very fortunate enough
to place the youngest-ever female
in the history of this world
on the peak of Mount Everest.
How did this happen?
It's all because of an ideology
that helps you to liberate yourself.
We brought a lot of extracurricular activities
and most of them got institutionalized now.
So for example, music.
Similarly the games. We have so many coaching academies,
we have boxing academy,
we have wrestling academy,
we have handball academy.
So we have kabaddi, that traditional Indian sport.
We have golf,
we have introduced golf also.
Golf is generally played by so-called rich people,
but today even poorest of the poor people
also are being trained in golf in our schools.
So our intention has been to give all 360 degrees,
you know, type of opportunities
to the students, so that whoever
is interested in whatever activity
they can go and then do it.
Break the barriers.
Break the fence,
at least mentally, because
poor people have been programmed to be victims,
programmed to be subjugated,
programmed to be on the margins always,
programmed to feel inferior.
We wanted to change all that.
There are certain games,
which are exclusive to rich people.
There are certain languages,
which are exclusive to middle class
and upper middle class in this country.
To put it in one word, the sole aim
of introducing all these co-curricular activities
is to break the stereotypes,
which are recklessly imposed on these people.
They are stereotypes Dr. Kumar knows all too well.
Born a Dalit,
his grandparents were laborers,
and access to the village well was restricted.
Dr. Kumar, credits his parents'
belief in the power of education
with helping him realize his aspirations.
He went on to join the Indian Police Service,
attended Harvard University
and then began pursuing educational reforms back home.
I attribute whatever I am today,
it's to my mother primarily.
They educated me in the village
although there were no good schools.
So then I stayed in the social welfare hostels,
the hostels which are managed by the government
for the poorest of the poor kids.
I passed with reasonably good grades.
Then I went to university,
and then I faced a worse form of discrimination
in the universities. Like there were, you know,
in those days I'm talking about,
so the bathrooms and the toilets
were exclusively meant for scheduled castes
and scheduled tribes.
We used to fight discrimination on one hand
and then again try to excel in academics day in and day out.
So that's how I came to education because
I deeply believe that education
is the only important weapon
that can really place the poorest of the poor people
from a very victimhood orbit to a prosperous orbit.
I think, in future, this is going to be a game changer
for the for the marginalized in this country.