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When in 1996 Abbas Bengali, Rajesh Arora and Brendan MacCarthaigh had seen Alor Pathe – a Bengali dance-drama on the life of an Irish 19th century saint, Edmund Rice, who transformed his country by a new approach to education – they were inspired collectively to do something similar for India.
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Edmund Rice with Mother Mary from the icon in SJC Bow Bazar |
They started the NGO SERVE (Students’ Empowerment, Rights & Vision through Education). Save Students, Save India summarises their inspiration. In practice: no child going to school in tears, no child going home in tears.
| L > R: Brendan, Rajesh, Sumitra (exPresident),Arunima (Sec), Abbas. |  |
Since then, SERVE has provoked much re-thinking of education in the country, especially in Kolkata schools. Grieved by the discovery that children suffer a lot in both mind and even body in our classrooms, that in fact for several years India has been the suicide ‘topper’ of the world, and more recently that Kolkata is the student suicide capital, they have used every medium available to challenge parents, teachers, Principals and even the Government towards an alternative. They have even provided such alternatives. We were introduced to our succeeding West Bengal Governors over the years – Viren J Shah and Gopal Krishna Gandhi – and are currently organizing a meeting with the present incumbent. They were more than enthusiastic about what we are attempting, and spoke about us publicly on other occasions.
The pages ahead will flesh out what we have attempted, and what has changed because of what we did