Equal Education for All Odyssey (contd.)EducationWorld‚s special correspondent Srinidhi Raghavendra is on a five-month, 25,000 km motorcycle odyssey across India and Asia. His mission: to communicate the importance of providing access to equal education to build harmonious societiesThe mission statement of EducationWorld (estb. 1999) is to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the No. 1 item on the national agenda”. To this end and to spread the message that the people of India need to demand Equal Quality Education for All, Education-World‚s special correspondent Srinidhi Raghavendra together with Kishore Patwardhan under the aegis of Borderless Bikers, Bangalore embarked on a historic five month, 25,000 km motorcycle odyssey across India and South Asia on December 3, 2006. Since then the duo has travelled 7,500 km through 11 states, interacting with students and teachers of over 22 schools and members of five Rotary clubs. Notes from Raghavendra‚s daily diary/ log covering the period December 3-11 were featured in our January issue (p.13). Extracts covering the period December 13-29 are given below.December 13. The day started badly. Already four days behind schedule, we were likely to be delayed in Pune for one more day because the documents expected from Bangalore hadn‚t arrived. We decided to make the best of the day by riding to the Bhima Shankar temple, 135 km from Pune. Tucked away in the heart of the Bhima Shankar Wildlife Sanctuary, this ancient Shiva temple is revered as one of the 12 Jyothirlinga shrines of the country. The Pune-Nashik road off which the sacred shrine is located is perhaps one of the busiest roads out of Pune. After crawling in second gear on stretches of hill road, and deftly negotiating winding curves and declines, we turned off the highway into a small, narrow and potholed trail which took us through panoramic forests all the way to the temple, an antiquated black granite building supported by attractively carved pillars. We returned to Pune late evening to learn our documents had arrived, and prepared for our onward journey to Shirdi and Aurangabad.December 14. We started off at 7.45 a.m on the Pune-Ahmednagar road (State Highway 50) and gunned our iron horses towards Ahmednagar from where we had to detour to Shanishingnapur, Shirdi, and if possible reach Nashik for the night halt.Our first stop was at a small village Supa (pop. 5,500), where we visited the local government school. In rural India Equal Education for All is an alien concept. “How is this possible when each state in India is different and education should teach children about their immediate environment?” queried one of the teachers. “Why should our children study what people in Jammu & Kashmir are studying?” asked another. It took a long session to explain Equal Education in respect of quality of content, and that whatever children learn should be comparable with anywhere else in the world. Finally the teachers seemed convinced and agreed to let us address the students on the subject. The next stop was Ahmednagar. Here…
