Community Takes Charge of Education in Remote Kargil Village

This article describes how residents of Chuttumail Doks village in Kargil, India ensure the continuation of a primary school in spite of many obstacles. The school, depicted as "simply falling apart" is located in a region faced with a war as well as a serious drought. Located at an altitude of over 11,000 feet, the problems of Chuttumail Doks are also reflected throughout the entire region of Ladakh.

According to the article, the situation at the primary school looked hopeless until determined, illiterate parents sought to find a solution to prevent their
children from becoming illiterate as well. They approached a local organisation, the Kargil Development Project (KDP), where the president of the 40-member Village Education Committee (VEC), Ghulam Hasan Khan, helped them get organised. His plan included training sessions for the two government schoolteachers; having these teachers exposed to informal teaching strategies for pre-primary-level children; and encouraging parents to become more active. These initial steps involved over one hundred parents many of whom volunteered to clean up the school building, add another classroom, help build a kitchen, as well take turns cooking.

The article describes Khan as saying in broken Hindi: “We lacked the means to relocate the school. And we did not want the education of our kids to suffer. So the villagers got together and dug an underground bunker. In the past, every time the shells started flying, the entire school huddled here till the
firing ended.”

In a predominantly Muslim Shia area, parents are described as being hesitant to allow their daughters out of the house to study. Now, acording to Khan, the number of girls has outstripped boys. Further he states “Girls are receiving additional incentives like scholarships..." Additionally the VEC raised money to buy two computers. According to the article, soon after, school enrolment jumped significantly.

In conclusion, Sehgal characterises the communities living in this harsh terrain as having "emerged as the biggest stakeholders in the educational process."
Further he reports this effort as sending out a positive signal "that’s being hailed throughout the state of Jammu and Kashmir" The author describes how this
project has helped increase the confidence of both parents and children and concludes, "No wonder Chuttumail Doks government school has Burke’s famous line painted across it: ‘Education is the chief defence of a nation.’"