Battling odds, 6 tribal girls crack Madhyamik examination with flying colours

Kolkata: What does Preeti and Kichku, Sefali Desra, Seema Marandi and Kakkhimoni and Purnima Tudu have in common?

These tribal girls are the first generation learners and they have all successfully passed the Madhyamik examination whose result was announced on Wednesday.

Madarpur village under Rajnagar block in Birbhum district is around 40 km from Suri and is a tribal-dominated village. Along with poverty, the illiteracy rate is also very high.

Festivities began early in the village when news of the girls clearing the Madhyamik examination poured in on Wednesday afternoon.

The girls were given coaching by Bulaki and Sushmita Chakraborty, two members of Shreeja India.

Taparada Mardy, a local youth and a WBCS aspirant gave them coaching in Mathematics. Chakraborty taught them other subjects like English, History, Geography and Physical Science too. Chanda Marandi, a local of the village, gave two rooms of her house for their coaching classes. Chakraborty stayed in the village for four days to coach the girls. Shreeja got immense cooperation from local teachers who allowed the girls to attend the coaching classes on Mondays and Tuesdays without attending school on these two days. When Tapan Roy, Shreeja coordinator, approached the school authorities with the request to send the girls to coaching on school days, the teachers accepted it as all wanted them to clear the first public examination.

Shreeja India has been set up by Shib Shankar Dasgupta, an engineer from Jadavpur University now settled in the United States. Shreeja's purpose is to make girls self-reliant and encourage them to devote their spare time in playing games like football. In Birbhum, a football coaching centre was set up in 2017.

The girls come and play football and within a few months, the game became very popular among the girls in the villages.

"The game helps them to improve their physical fitness and at the same time their sense of cooperation went up fast," Dasgupta said.

It may be mentioned that the Kolkata Police in collaboration with Shreeja have introduced Damini, a project where football coaching is provided to the girls with a view to make them self-reliant.

Two football coaching centres have been set up in Park Circus and the other one in North Kolkata. The girls who come to play football will be given coaching in studies later.