Learning Experience

The current political situation in Andhra Pradesh is somewhat charged. The western region of the state, called Telangana, comprises 10 out of AP’s 23 districts, and includes the capital city, Hyderabad. Claiming unfair treatment from the state government, the people and political parties of that area have been agitating to separate and form a new Telangana state. It’s true that water and other resources are scarce there, but it seems to me that they are scarce in other areas of the state that I have visited as well. At any rate, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is the main political party fighting for this separation. They’ve been organizing bandhs, which are basically all-encompassing strikes, for the last year. These strikes happen at least every week, and everything from schools to buses to hospitals throughout the Telangana area has to be shut down under threat of violence if they don’t comply. That’s the background of the situation.

Now, the first week and a half that I was at Matendla, everything was peaceful and calm. But in the middle of the second week, we had some visitors from TRS on the morning of a bandh . Three guys came in to the school and asked Vishnu, the headmaster, to shut everything down. We could see them talking from the opposite wing of the school, and some teachers told us what was going on. The teachers were somewhat tense, because they didn’t want to waste a day of school. Yet they trusted the headmaster to deal with the situation.

Vishnu is enthusiastic and idealistic and cares very much about the students. He is also very good at showing that to other people and infecting them with his ideas. He somehow managed to convince the TRS people that canceling school here in a remote village would not only do no good for the bandh, but would also be detrimental to the students. If Telangana is to get out of its current situation, he argued, it has to have educated people. And they listened.

But they didn’t give up that easily. The idea of the bandh seemed abandoned, but they asked if instead, they could sign the students up for the TRS. Once again, Vishnu used his quiet logic on them. The students are young, but they must make that decision for themselves. But you can talk to them and tell them why you think they should join, he conceded.

nd with that, everybody let out a collective breath of relief. School would not be canceled. The 10th graders were taken into a nearby room to listen to the TRS folks, but the rest of the classes continued as planned.

The thing that strikes me is that this wasn’t a one-off situation. It had happened before and would almost certainly happen in the future again. Vishnu’s argument worked this time, but apparently that hasn’t always been the case. And what if the school had been located somewhere less remote? What of the urban schools in Hyderabad? Hyderabad is the center of the state, and schools there have lost an immense amount of teaching time to these bandhs, because they can’t argue that they are far away. It makes me angry that children and students have to suffer the consequences of this political action. These strikes only happen in the Telangana areas. How could it possibly help your people to deprive them of necessary services (hospitals and public transportation for the many people who don’t have their own vehicles)? All they are doing is setting their own students back.

I think that Vishnu and the teachers must have felt the same way I did. They’ve dedicated their careers to helping kids gain some education in a place where the previous generation was mostly married by 14 and out of school long before then. But they can’t voice their sentiments, because of the potential consequences.

I think that maybe their conviction that the students must be taught to make their own choices plays into it as well. Now that I think about it, I think that Vishnu twisted the situation around and turned it into a learning experience for the students. The students listened to the TRS people, discussed it amongst themselves (with no teachers present), and told them that for the moment, school was important. Those of the student body who wanted to help the TRS would meet them after school to learn more about what they could do, but they would not give up their school time.

So perhaps it’s not all bad. Having a charged political situation that affects them means that the students have to think more about politics. The students will be more interested in how the whole state is working, rather than focusing on their surroundings. Some of them have not been further than 10 km from their village, so this exposes them to issues that affect a much larger area. So I guess whatever the situation is at hand, if you have good teachers and a good attitude, you can make anything into a learning experience for the students.

Strike 1, 2, 3! You're ou-...Oh, wait, what? You're going to keep striking?

My journey to the first school I will be working at has been delayed for two days, so I'll get a little more time to prepare my lesson plans before I go and have fun with my family. Right now, I'm in Secunderabad at my grandparents' flat (apartment), which is in the building next door to my cousins' flat. For anyone who isn't familiar with South Indian geography, Secunderabad is the neighbor of Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh (the Telugu-speaking state).

Okay, well, I'm not all that familiar with Indian geography either. But Hyderabad is a little bit east of the tip of that arrow (the jet lag is making me too sleepy and lazy to go back and correct it in Paint).

Lately, there have been some conflicts between the eastern and western parts of the state, leading to riots, strikes (that translation doesn't really cover everything - a bandh is a lot bigger), etc. The western part, called the Telangana region, would like to split off and form its own state, leaving the Rayalaseema and Coastal Andhra regions in the state of Andhra Pradesh. I don't think I know enough about the reasons to explain, but I gather that among other things, it has something to do with resource allocation and language. At any rate, the biggest problem with this is that Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh, is located within the Telangana region.

Hyderabad has been the site of many a bandh in recent months. One of my cousins had her final exams last semester postponed for at least a month because the college kept having to close. We were worried that it might bring trouble for my project if buses weren't traveling and the roads were supposed to be empty. Luckily, it's calmed down a little, and according to my uncle, should stay that way until elections are over at the end of August. I'll cross my fingers for that.

Still, I think it shouldn't bring too much trouble. The two schools that I am visiting are in Medak and Warangal districts, which both fall under Telangana, so I wouldn't be crossing any would-be borders. This reminds me, I should tell you a little bit about the schools themselves, but since I've got a couple extra days, I think I'll save that for when I am less sleepy. Now that's a rather abrupt conclusion, but I'm tired. I guess I could say bye. Okay, then. Bye for now!