MADHYA PRADESH : The Government Railway Police (GRP) in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore region begins most days attending to the familiar rhythm of railway policing. But in the slums that hug the railway lines of Indore, Mhow and Ujjain, the same officers have taken on a role no rulebook ever assigned them: that of teachers, counsellors and quiet reformers.
Their initiative, Patri ki Patshala—literally, “the school of the tracks”—is the brainchild of Superintendent of Police (GRP-Indore) Padam Vilochan Shukla. For him, the origins of this unusual campaign lie not in a police manual but in a memory from more than three decades ago.
“Back in 1993, when John Major visited Indore to see the slum improvement project, I was preparing for my competitive exams,” Shukla recalled. “Watching him walk into the slums, seeing how seriously the intervention was designed for the poorest families—it stayed with me. I told myself then that one day I would work for slum dwellers. The chance came only after I joined as SP-GRP in October 2025.”
What began as a crime-analysis exercise soon revealed a pattern Shukla couldn’t ignore. GRP teams found repeated involvement of local children—some as young as seven—in petty thefts near stations. They also discovered clusters of teenagers, including girls, using drugs in corners along the tracks.
“Our initiative works on a multi-pronged approach,” he explained. “We try to educate and enlighten kids about the dangers of loitering on the tracks, pelting stones at trains, or getting pulled into bag and mobile theft. Our female cops also speak to young girls about good touch and bad touch. And of course, we focus strongly on keeping them away from drugs.” Patri ki Patshala is not a conventional school.
There are no classrooms or blackboards. Instead, teams of GRP personnel—especially women constables—walk into the slums regularly, sit with families, and speak to children about safety, dignity and choices. In just one month, the GRP mapped a full database of the families living near the three stations. Launched on Children’s Day, 2025, in Indore, the initiative expanded quickly to Ujjain on December 2 and to Mhow on December 11.
“In the very first month, at least four children who had dropped out have gone back to school,” said deputy superintendent of police (GRP-Ujjain) Jyoti Sharma. Among them is 16-year-old Tisha Akodia, a physically challenged girl from Ujjain’s Hira Mill area.
“Tisha had been enrolled twice in private schools, but each time they discontinued her because her uniform got soiled in the washroom,” Sharma shared. “Our constable Shilpa told us she was the only out-of-school child among 200 kids in the area. Once SP-sir instructed us, we ensured she was admitted to the nearby government school. Today, she attends Class VIII regularly. Seeing her confidence return has been incredibly moving.”
In Indore, assistant sub-inspector Bannu Solanki leads another small team that has quietly rewritten the stories of three more children. “Two of them are siblings. Their mother passed away, and with the father working as a daily wager, they simply stopped going to school,” Solanki explained. “They hadn’t paid fees for months. Under Patri ki Patshala, we got both of them re-enrolled—one in Class I, the other in LKG.”
In Mhow, the initiative helped 16-year-old Aiswarya, daughter of a scrap collector, return to school as well. But school attendance is only part of the challenge the officers are tackling. During home visits, GRP teams noticed that social media—especially Instagram—was consuming the attention of several slum teenagers. The initiative is now set to expand to Ratlam and eventually to stations across the largely tribal belt of the Indore–Ujjain region. For Shukla, this is continuation of the kind of public-centred work he believes in.
During his earlier posting as district police superintendent in Jhabua, he took on an unconventional cultural reform: curbing the extravagant custom of “3D” weddings—DJ, Dowry and Daroo (liquor). “It stopped waste of money,” he said. “It kept families out of debt trap, and reduced violence and accidents.”
Today, as Patri ki Patshala grows, Shukla sees the same possibility for lasting change—not through force, but through patient listening.