A 15-year-old boy is struggling to balance his classes with his work as a caretaker of an apartment building.
A 14-year-old boy, talking incoherently in the class, revealed that he could not bear to see his parents fight every day.
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The teenagers are pupils at a community learning centre for children of unorganised workers, mostly first-generation learners.
The teachers of the centre Rokeya Siksha Kendra have been participating in a workshop focused on mental health of such children and teenagers.
The aim of the training programme is to equip the teachers to deal with the anxieties triggered in the minds of the pupils by the pandemic.
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Kushal Debnath, who spent five months behind bars after being arrested by the Trinamul administration in 2017 and is out on bail, said this was not the time to remember his personal grudge against the Mamata Banerjee government.
Dipankar Bhattacharya, CPIML Liberation general secretary, pointed out: “Other ruling parties too have histories of torture but they are not fascists like the BJP.”
Debnath is not advocating voting for Mamata. He and Bhattacharya are part of an extraordinary campaign in Bengal that stands out because they do not seek votes for any party or person. Instead, they have a crystal-clear appeal: Don’t vote for the BJP.
A coaching centre that started a month ago from the ground floor of a Patuli apartment block has enrolled close to 50 children whose right to education has been robbed by the pandemic.
The students of Rokeya Siksha Kendra live mostly in slums in and around Patuli, off EM Bypass. Their religions are different but lives similar. Their parents are masons, drivers, domestic help or from some other unorganised sector.
On paper, all of them are students of government schools. But virtual education is uncharted terrain for most of them.
If there is a smartphone at home, there is no data. Some children have older siblings preparing for bigger exams and they get priority when it comes to using the smartphone. With earnings going down and prices going up, the parents are bogged down with survival, not education of their wards.