UTTAR PRADESH: Inspector Ranjeet Singh Yadav is popularly known as ‘Khakhi wale Guruji’ in the temple town of Ayodhya. His mission: educating children of slum dwellers. The UP policeman found inspiration for his ‘Apna School’ initiative while on duty.
“I was posted at one of the ghats along the Saryu in Kotwali Ayodhya. I’d notice many children begging near temples and the ghats. Whenever I tried to interact with them, they would flee fearing my khaki uniform,” he says.
These were the slum children living along the Saryu, begging for alms with the break of dawn. One day, Yadav took his bike and reached the slum areas at Khajua Kund of the temple town to find scores of children and their parents getting ready to start their day.
“For them, survival was the biggest challenge. When I asked their parents if they were willing to spare their children for studies, they happily nodded, but they did not have the required documents. This drove the teacher inside me and I offered to teach them myself daily,” says Inspector Yadav. The next morning, the officer reached the slums of Khajua Kund before the children could accompany the parents for begging.
“I had gone prepared with notebooks, pencils, rubbers, slates, chalks and a mat for at least 60 children to sit and a board to teach them,” says the inspector.“I asked the children to give me a broom so that I could clean the area for them to sit. But they cleaned a patch of land themselves, spread out the mat and put up the board on a chair under a tree. That’s how the idea of ‘Apna School’ started taking shape,” says Yadav.
The cop himself comes from a humble background. Son of a farmer of Azamgarh with four brothers, he remembers how closely he has seen the paucity of means, and how he and his brothers struggled to get an education as it was not possible for his father to arrange books for them. “I studied by borrowing books for a limited period,” says Yadav who is a postgraduate in Philosophy from BHU.
At a time, when the pandemic has affected the education of even the elite, the step taken by Inspector Yadav to educate the slum children comes as a whiff of fresh air in their life. We are grateful to ‘Khakhi wale Guruji’ for his Apna School where our children learn something. He has given our children new dreams to follow,” says Lalita, a slum dweller.
Apna School started out with only 30 children. The strength has gone up to 60. How does he manage his working hours with teaching? Yadav says he catches the children early in the morning. Otherwise, they leave for ghats and temples for begging. In a few months of the initiative, these children have started showing interest in studies and do not want to skip a single class. “I can see hope in their eyes. They think this man can take us forward and be a medium to life beyond slums,” says Yadav.