Jai Bhim Network

It had been obvious to me, as it has been over the years, that Tibor and János are really stretched personally. The school now has 250 students and it is obviously working really well. All those students are Gypsy children, or mostly, and many have found themselves excluded in the State school system. Or have had such poor teaching that they might as well never have been at school. I was told that a quite high proportion of students arrive having supposedly finished primary school, often in their mid teens, but virtually unable to read, write or do simple arithmetic. The school has to find out where students are and then bring them forward. Increasingly they are getting high school graduates and a few have gone on to University.

It’s very apparent to me that the whole atmosphere in the school has changed since I first started coming. Students are much more friendly, much more open and less unpleasantly unruly or rude. János, Tibor and Kubu with Benu, another mitra who comes from the Gypsy settlement nearby, are all obviously very good teachers and communicators and they’ve gradually formed a gifted staff - not easy in such a remote area with such poor facilities. Few people will want to work in such difficult circumstances with Gypsies. The effect on these young people is unimaginable. For most boys until now life promised simply a series of jail sentences and desperate impoverishment often palliated only by drink and various kinds of deep drugs - the so-called legal highs. Early death is almost mandatory. Girls start having babies almost a soon as they’re fertile and are old women at 50. The school and the other work that János and Tibor do with their college friends is offering opportunities where none existed before. But they are so stretched. Sometimes when I come I hardly get to see them because they are just dealing with one crisis after another and are exhausted.

This time I discovered they had a number of apparently petty problems that they could not find anybody to solve. I found out, for instance, that the central heating system wasn’t working on one side of the house and winter is a-comin’ in. So, being a little bit of a handyman, I thought I could help at least in that way and I did manage to work with János to get it going. After I’d finished we’d finished. Tibor and János expressed their frustration. They are getting the school running so well but they can’t get anybody to fix the central heating.

This is one of the problems of working in such circumstances. And we see very much similar things in India too. Where people have been marginalised for generations they stop taking responsibility. They don’t even think they can take responsibility. Leaders tend simply to exercise power and to accrue to themselves great advantage from their leadership rather than bestowing advantage on others through it. Poverty and marginalisation make for passivity. There are very few people able to take much responsibility and so it all falls on Tibor and János. Of course people are beginning to take more and more responsibility and in time they will - the ‘Gypsy problem’ will disappear. That is what we are seeing in the third and fourth generations after Dr.Ambedkar. But now all the burden falls on these two magnificent men with a few others coming up around them.