School for Salboni.

As the first person from his village in India to graduate from college, Sanat Mahato had his sights set on a job in the city. So he went to a hospital in the nearby city of Jamshedpur to talk to a doctor, whom he had been told could help him to get a job. The encounter led to Mahato making an unexpected decision which has given the children of his village a chance to follow in his footsteps.

At the time, Mahato's village, Salboni, had no electricity and no schools. It lies about three miles from the highway. So for Mahato to graduate was a considerable achievement. It came as a shock when the doctor, Amit Mukherjee, suggested that instead of taking up the city career to which he felt entitled, he should return to his village and build a school.

`Sanat Mahato thought I was trying to get rid of him because I did not want to give him a job,' says Mukherjee. `But 70 per cent of India's population live in villages. There are thousands of graduates in the cities looking for jobs. Most of them end up as lowly paid clerks or office boys. This would be disappointing for someone who had studied in such difficult circumstances. And I also thought that getting education to the villages is vital.'

When Mukherjee and three friends started visiting Salboni every weekend on their scooters, Mahato realized they really wanted to help. `He asked his father for a barren piece of land,' says Mukherjee. `We got a Rotary Club to donate Rs10,000 towards the cost of building materials and Mahato and his friends built a single long room with a thatched roof.'

The school opened in 1987, with 12 pupils. Mahato decided to charge minimal fees and to insist on the children wearing uniform, because he felt this would give them dignity. Their parents saved up the money, because they felt uniforms were part of going to a proper school.

The school now has 60 pupils and has grown with help from outside agencies. `The president of the trade union at Tata Steel in Jamshedpur was so impressed that he pledged Rs400,000 to turn it into a high school,' says Mukherjee. `Tragically, he was later assassinated. But the company gave the money on his behalf.'

In March 1988 the school's first batch of school certificate candidates took their exams. Ninety per cent of them passed.

Mukherjee ascribes the project's success to life skills he learnt as a student, when he encountered the ideas of MRA. `I learnt to look at my own life before blaming others for what went wrong in the world,' he says. He also started to spend time in silence every morning--and found that `good, constructive, inspiring ideas' came to him. Mahato, who used to have a problem with alcohol, has adopted the same approach.