Vidya Bharati school in India - Bangladesh border strives to grow in spite of challenges faced

School - Anandamayee Ghoshal Memorial Tripuraswari Vidya Mandir, Unakoti, Tripura

In India, 17 states are located on international borders, which includes Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Sikkim Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Gujarat. The human habitats falling within 0 to 10 KM from international borders are considered as border area settlements.

Social sectors, especially those of education and health, are found to be seriously deficient in infrastructure and systems of service delivery in most of these border settlements. Lack of access to schools, particularly at secondary levels, impedes the growth of people living there. Though Indian Government has taken several steps to develop these areas, a lot is still left to be desired.

Vidya Bharati has been able to successfully run schools in several remote areas, where previously there were no educational institutions at all, but faces tough challenges in their road towards advancement. One of such schools is Anandamayee Ghoshal Memorial Tripuraswari Vidya Mandir in Tripura.

Anandamayee Ghoshal Memorial Tripuraswari Vidya Mandir was established in the year 2012 and located only 200 metres away from Indo Bangladesh Border. It runs in a donated building, given by a well wishing professor. At present this school runs from classes 1 to 5 consisting of 84 students. Due to lack of space the school is unable to expand, in spite of local support. During heavy rains the ground floor gets flooded with water and the school is forced to stay close during the period. With the assistance from local community, few amenities like water filters and blackboards has been installed, but a lot more is required.

 The principal of the school, Shri Dinendrakumar Pal intends to build a new three story building so that more students can be admitted.He also plans to increase the highest class to 12th standard. With this aim a building plan was prepared and shared with Tripura State Government since Nov 2017 but no positive response has been received yet.

In spite of all these challenges, the students of this school constantly deliver excellent results each year during examinations and participate in co curricular activities with much enthusiasm.

If you are interested to help such border area schools, kindly write to us at info@vidyabharatialumni.org or donate online in our donation page www.vidyabharatialumni.org/donation