‘Villagers took 20 years to agree to school’

Lalita Umtambra fresh from having acquired a degree in nursing was ready to start her first job at a Neral clinic on July 19 Heavy rains back home in her village of Irsalwadi saw her wait it out a few days The landslide that buried the Raigad taluka village under 30feet of debris on July 21 took Lalitarsquos lifeThe young woman like most other children of the village began her education at a primary school set up by a group of trekking enthusiasts from Thane Over the years the school became as much a part of the villagerrsquos lives as of the Thanekars who helped build it brick by brickA resident of Irsalwadi Khalapur whose family was wiped out in the July 21 landslide The death toll officially stands at 57 83 persons are still unaccounted for PicGetty ImagesOn January 23 1972 the group had set off to scale the craggy weatherbeaten peak of Irsalgad at whose base sat the village They were halfway up there when tragedy struck and the leader of the group Prakash Durve slipped off the edgeldquoThe residents rushed to help we searched together for hours till we found his body They also helped us carry it down the treacherous terrain to the Chowk village They were selfless in the way they rallied around us It was the beginning of a lifelong relationship thatrsquos not unlike familyrdquo Satish Waivude tells midday Janiv members convinced the villagers to trust them to help build a well Until then the residents would collect around this pit to draw filthy water and bathe Deveshu Thanekar the son of the one of the core group members recalls visiting the village every Independence and Republic day to hoist the flag in the school compound Pics CourtesyJanivWaivude and friends Sharad Ovalekar Shrikrishna Gokhale Ravi Dongaonkar and Manvendra Thanekar made regular trips to Irsalwadi in the months to come and realised that even for the 1970s the tribal settlement was living in the dark ages There was no organised sanitation water was drawn from a large pit which animals also bathed in and education facilities didnrsquot exist They decided to form a nonprofit that they named Janiv under Ovalekarrsquos leadership In 1976 Janiv held its first camp in Irsalwadi to educate the villagers about the importance of sanitation and hygiene The same year work began on the construction of a well Unfortunately the task wasnrsquot minus hurdlesldquoA city dweller was a suspicious person to them They had never been exposed to outside interaction and insisted that their water pit was sufficientrdquo Dongaonkar recallsDuring this time Janiv members noticed that the nearest school for Irsalwadirsquos children was in Chowk village a onehour trek each way down a single narrow path through the mountain It was why the kids there didnrsquot go to school Their parents earned their livelihood by selling wood foraged from the forest working as daily wage labourers and farming rice a few months of the yearIt was slow work but Janiv managed to convince the Irsalwadi gram panchayat to sanction a school in the village in 1993 This was 20 years since their first interaction with the locals The struggle however had just begunFrom left Shrikrishna Gokhale Satish Waivude Deveshu Thanekar and Ravi Dongaonkar members of Thanebased NGO Janiv flip through an album that holds memories of their work in illfated Irsalwadi which they helped build from a tribal settlement to a bustling village PicSatej ShindeldquoBecause of the hard and long route up to the village no contractor was willing to take up the work Labourers too refused to ferry the heavy construction material For the first four years the proposal stayed on paper Finally we convinced the villagers to help carry the material up to the village in exchange for a daily wage remunerationrdquo Gokhale tells us ldquoWhile we were struggling to find contractors and labourers we were also trying to convince the villagers why they needed a school in the first place It would be years before they finally agreed and only then did we start construction together in 1997 We had around R1 lakh in funding from the panchayat to which we added R35000 from our own pockets so that the villagers could be compensated for labourrdquo he saysIn 2003 Kashinath Pardhi who completed his primary education at the school became the first Irsalwadi resident to appear successfully for the SSC exam and went on to earn an HSC degree in 2005 ldquoPardhi was in charge of the donation box at the school where visitors could contribute what they wished to towards the development of the village till he unfortunately passed away in this monthrsquos landsliderdquo says Waivude ldquoHersquos missingrdquo Manvendrarsquos son Deveshu quickly interrupts The older men share a look sometimes itrsquos best to leave things unsaidShrikrishna GokhaleThe death toll from the July 21 landslide officially stands at 57 83 persons are still unaccounted for The National Disaster Response Force NDRF called off its operation earlier this week due to incessant rains and suspected rotting of bodies under the debrisFor Deveshu the blow is as hard as it is for Gokhale Waivude and Dongaonkar His father who was at the forefront of the efforts to build the school passed away last year ldquoThree brothers from the village studied at the school and went on to become Home Guardsrdquo he tells us proudly like a doting elder brother wouldA video that Deveshu shared on YouTube recently documenting Janivrsquos association with the village was shot in 2012 for a travel channel ldquoWe have held countless medical camps there Every year we would go there on Republic Day and Independence Day to hoist the national flag in the schoolrsquos compound and come back with a list of supplies that the villagers neededrdquo he saysJaniv founder Sharad Ovalekar relaxes with a villager during one of their many visitsThe school which was operational till 2018 was currently shut because there were no children in the age group of Class I to IV to study there The Zilla Parishad rules dictate that there should be a minimum enrolment of 21 students for a governmentaided school to stay operationalFatefully the school is also the only structure still standing after the landslide and was used by the NDRF to set up campldquoA group of 10 to 12 young boys had gone to the school the night before the landslide to watch movies on their phones the school is the only spot where you get decent mobile network They escaped death and were also the first to raise an alarm when they heard the rocks come crashing They ran all the way down to Chowk and alerted the authorities to begin rescue effortsrdquo says GokhaleJaniv continues to closely monitor the ongoings ldquoWe visited the spot and saw that the village is currently inundated with supplies that have come in from good Samaritans and government agencies We will continue to track if all the promised aid reaches them We are also trying to identify orphans single women or anyone else who has been been left without family and plan to support them in any way possible for the next four to five yearsrdquo Gokhale saysWith inputs from Shirish VaktaniaRs 1 lakhThe funding that Janiv received from the Irsalwadi gram panchayat for the school