Pravin Mahajan—Janarth
Janarth’s Shakharshala project. Photograph by Prashant Panjiar, courtesy of the American India Foundation
The Organization
Janarth is innovating education solutions for children of distress seasonal migrants. Janarth reaches 12,000 children in seven districts of Maharashtra who migrate every year to sugarcane factories with their parents.
Janarth’s interventions cover the full cycle of migration, with ‘Sakhar Shalas’ or sugar schools at sugarcane factories and hostels in the villages from where families migrate.
Recognizing that every year in Maharashtra alone, 650,000 families with 200,000 children migrate to sugarcane cooperatives, Janarth is lobbying the state government to develop incentives and schemes for their education, protection and rights.
The Innovation
VIDEO: a short profile of Pravin Mahajan and Janarth.
Janarth was launched by Pravin Mahajan in 1989. The signature innovation of Janarth is the ‘Sakhar Shalas’ or sugar schools that run on the site of sugarcane factories. They operate for six months before marginal families return to their villages.
Evaluations by education experts have given Sakhar Shalas high ratings on innovation, quality and the learning outcomes of students. Sakhar Shalas ensure one classroom and teacher for 25 students. They have laboratories and playgrounds and deliver learning that is relevant to the context of students. Janarth has been authorized by the state education department to ensure re-admission of students in their village schools upon their return. All schools are fitted with preprimary centres. 46% of students enrolled in Sakhar Shalas are girls.
Through a Sakhar Shala scheme, sugarcane cooperatives receive financial incentives from the government to set up on-site sugar schools. Factories allot space and a labour officer to oversee the running of their schools. The factory education board is represented by parents, the district education officer and senior factory officials.
Since migrant families are contracted by mukadams (contractors), they do not always return to the same factory every year. Children may end up at different Sakhar Shalas, or worse, not at any at all. Thus, Janarth is developing seasonal hostels in villages, to arrest the migration of children in the first place.
Seasonal hostels are driven by village ownership. The infrastructure is provided by the village. Janarth recruits, trains and places caretakers and a cook. Each hostel caters to 30 students. Parents are discouraged from leaving livestock behind for children to attend.
Hostelers co-manage their hostels and participate in a carefully aligned series of developmental activities, games and fun. Their time at the hostel leads to high academic performance, better health and sharp life skills. Empirical reports confirm that they perform better at school than day boarders. Increasingly, children of non-migrant families are signing up for the hostel activities to fill up their after-school hours. Linkages between the village hostel and the government schools are pushing the latter to be more quality driven and accountable.
Janarth also leverages existing government schemes and lobbies state departments for new policies for children of migrant labourers. Advocacy with the government has yielded:
- A Sakhar Shala scheme—perhaps the first government provision for distress seasonal migrants in the country.
- Mid-day meal schemes for Sakhar Shalas and village hostels (typically, mid-day meal schemes are reserved only for schools under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan).
- A declaration by the State Education Minister to make Sakhar Shalas mandatory in all sugarcane factories.
- For the first time, the government of Maharashtra conducted a survey in 2006 to count potential child migrants in all districts of the state. The survey declared that 1,50,000 children of school going age (6–14years) were at risk of distress migration every year.
- A government declaration for launching village seasonal hostels in all areas of Maharashtra that sends out large labour forces every year. The government accepted the standard set by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan of INR 6800 per child per year.
Partnerships with the government have led to an investment of INR 14.81 million towards Sakhar Shalas in Maharashtra.
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