Panna, Madhya Pradesh
It is only education that can bring about an end to poverty, said Vijay Kumar Chansauriya. The former government school teacher from Panna in Madhya Pradesh retired as a teacher at a government school in a tribal village Khandiya after working as an assistant teacher for nearly 39 years.
“There is no malaise worse than poverty and only education can cure it,” Chansauriya told Gaon Connection. He knows that first hand as his childhood was spent in abject poverty. According to him, he studied till the eighth at Ajaygarh kasba after which he came to Panna. “I could not afford to complete my schooling and at the age of thirteen or fourteen, I became a rickshaw driver,” he said.
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Chansauriya is in the news now. The retired government school teacher gave away his life’s earnings including his retirement benefits. He has formed a trust with Rs 40 lakh rupees. And the interest from the money will be used to ensure an education for children from nearby villages. Their school fees and other expenses related to education will be met with that money.
“In my role as an assistant teacher, I received nothing but love and respect. Now, I am happy to retire. My two sons are in government service and my son-in-law is a bank manager. I have no need for any financial assistance now,” he said. Chansauriya decided to donate all his gratuity and provident fund amount. He said he had the blessings of his wife and children to do so.
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Chansauriya described the horrors of his rickshaw driving days. “I was a rickshaw driver for one and a half years. There were times drunks would get onto my rickshaw and abuse me and not even pay the fare. It became so intolerable that I gave it up and took to selling milk,” the retired school teacher narrated.
“Selling milk wasn’t easy either. I had to travel ten to twelve kilometres to a village called Ranipur to collect the milk. I had to traverse dense jungles and steep pathways to do so,” he recalled with a shudder. He used to buy milk at Ranipur at Rs 1.50 a litre that he then sold in Panna for Rs 2.
But, Chansauriya was steadfast in his focus to study no matter what. He directly appeared for his higher secondary exam in 1977, and passed with creditable scores. He studied under street lamps till late at night, braving the anti-social elements that frequented the area on account of a liquor store close by.
“There were days I had no money to buy ink for my pen. It was my economics paper that day and I was wondering how I would write my exam without a pen when my friend Dinesh Singh poured some of the ink from his pen into mine,” an emotional Chansauriya recalled. Dinesh had also helped him out with textbooks which he could not afford to buy.
The school Chansauriya taught at was at Khandiya, a village inhabited entirely by adivasis. “It was a very poor village. The women would go into the jungle to collect firewood that they would sell and the menfolk worked as daily wage labourers. They find it extremely difficult to keep their children in school,” he said.
And, that was the reason the retired school teacher decided to donate his money. His family members are extremely proud of what he did. “We are so proud of his decision,” Gaurav Chansauriya, his younger son, told Gaon Connection.
Talking of the rousing send off he was given by his school and of all the honours bestowed on him at Panna, Chansauriya said: “Everyone is speaking of the destination of my journey. But no one sees the blisters on my feet that I had getting there. I am happy that at last I am ‘human’ because, while I was poor, people did not consider me a human being,” he concluded.
Read the story in Hindi
