BELAGAVI: This village seems to be celebrating Teacher’s Day every day. Welcome to Inchal, the ‘village of teachers’, where there is at least one teacher in every household and hundreds of students down the years to appreciate their work.
Inchal in Saundatti taluk, with a population of about 10,000, has about 900 teachers working in government-aided schools. There are also some others who are working in the Education Department. And that’s not all. Hundreds of Bachelor of Education and Diploma in Education graduates are awaiting placements and will add to the number.
A few decades ago, Inchal was a backward village haunted by murders, dacoity and other criminal activities and school education had become a nightmare. But then, the tide changed. The head of the Inchal Mutt, Shivanand Bharati, along with three teachers, founded the Shivanand Bharati Education Society in 1975 with the objective of educating every child in the village.
The Society established a high school in 1975, a PU college in 1982 and DEd college in 1985. In the beginning, there were just a handful of students enrolled. But today, over a thousand students are being imparted education. Satar Ismail Sab, a teacher from the village, said, “Shivanand Bharati Swamiji showed us that a big revolution can be brought about if one takes up the challenge to change society”.