Following are excerpts from Joydeep's site visit report to SLADS, Bihar
which he presented at the projects meeting on Jan 9, 1999. 

For those unfamiliar with the project, the Jamini K Mahato Secondary
school provides instruction in classes VI to X. This is the only secondary
school in the Salboni area of South Bihar which comprises of 53 villages.
Asha, MIT has committed to funding roughly $9000 over three years to pay
for teachers' salaries, library books, laboratory apparatus and furniture.

Joydeep visited the project in december '98 and stayed there for two days 
and talked to Mr. Mahato who runs the school, the children attending the
school and their parents.

First off, the money sent by Asha has been put to good use as envisaged in
the project proposal. Apart from paying for teachers' salaries, they
bought labware (glass equipment and an almirah) and a steel rack to house
the considerable stock of important books which could not be purchased by
the students on their own. 

An important observation that came out was the low attendance rates,
bordering on 50%, of almost all the students. On the two days Joydeep was
at the school, he found that almost an entirely different set of students
attended the school on each of the days! The contributing factors to this
apparently was the large distances (on the order of 10km) that many of the
students had to commute every day. In addition, they help their parents
out in the fields during the harvesting season. 

The results achieved by the students in the secondary board exams are not
very spectacular. But the positive aspect is that there has been a
distinct improvement in the past three years. There are many more students
securing second division now, and there are a couple of students who have
got first division. Another factor that needs to be considered is that
most of them are first generation students so the school going culture is
only now taking some concrete form. Another heartening aspect was that the
ratio of girls to boys attending the school was close to 1. Joydeep could
talk to only a couple of parents, and found that in general they had a
favorable view of their children being able to attend school.

The standard of teaching at the school leaves a lot to be desired. With
the honorable exception of a lady teacher who commuts from Jamshedpur
daily to teach Geography, most of the other teachers were pretty bad. Some
of the teachers were initially sent to XLRI for training. Joydeep pointed
out to them that XLRI being a management institute might not be the proper
place for training teachers. There are some plans to get them trained by
some of the Ramakrishna Mission school teachers. 

When asked how the school can be made better, students pointed out the
necessity of starting a subsidized canteen. Mr. Mahato considered it a
good idea that rather than depend on external support to make this a
totally free canteen, they wanted to make it a subsidized one which can be
self sustaining. Joydeep encouraged him to use the cash in hand from the
school reserves (about Rs. 5000) to start this as soon as possible.

Although Mr. Mahato seemed to be considerably well off, most of his income
was derived from his legal profession. When asked how he can afford the
accommodation and travel expenses of occasional foreign visitors, Mr.
Mahato mentioned that the money is derived from another grant that he gets
from a foreign funding agency. He seemed to have the impression that for
catching the attention of funding agencies and organizations like Asha, he
needs to maintain a relatively high profile. Joydeep made it clear to him
that there was no question of any ostentation as far as Asha was
concerned.

During his visit, Mr. Mahato took Joydeep to one of the primary schools in
one of the nearby villages. The school currently has just a thatched roof
to house a number of children. The villagers talked about the need to
build a more concrete structure for the school. The labor will come from
the village itself and the materials also procured from the area to suit
the local needs. When asked why the primary school can't be housed in the
same secondary school, it came out that most of the children are too small
for them to be expected to walk considerable distances, so they need a
school in their own village. Joydeep asked them to send a proposal to Asha
MIT for this new project.

One issue which was unclear at the end of the visit was how much really is
the school helping adivasi cildren. Joydeep noted that most of the
children had the title of Mahato, and they could concievably belong to a
more economically well off social class. 

The things that stood out, and which was most positive, was the quality of
life and environment even in the remote rural areas of Bihar. Joydeep
mentioned that the villages really clean, there was no pollution compared
to the mess that some of our bigger cities have got into, and he got along
really fine on the village water. 

On the whole, the conclusion was that Asha's support was certainly being
put to good use, and there is a discernable interest in the children and
the society towards education.