LitIndia centre – 202207
Address – Karma, Daltonganj
District – Palamu
State – Jharkhand

Karma is a very small village amid a dense wild forest. The inhabitants are very poor and most live in large mud houses that are made of earth and thatch. Due to the climate being very hot, forest fires are a common occurrence. The inhabitants also face a major water scarcity issue. The nearest water source is 8 km away, and they need to travel daily in extreme heat for it.

Karma is around 250 kilometres from the nearest regional office. The only way to reach the village is to traverse through a wildlife sanctuary and a long stretch of lonely unpaved road. The silence of the wilderness is broken only by the sound of animals moving in the undergrowth, and the further one goes, the eerier it feels. With no sight of humans for miles around and no network coverage, it is difficult to know if one is moving in the right direction. Also, the fear of encountering wild animals adds to it. Overcoming these limitations, we would start at three o’clock in the morning to be at the location by 11 o’clock. It would take us eight hours to reach there, and we would have to travel back and forth daily since there was no place to stay in the village. We only had a 4–5-hour window to work since we needed to head back before it became dark. Because of these constraints, it took us 6 months to build our library there. In an environment where resources are scarce and life is difficult, it was a mammoth task for us to get the locals excited about education.

Since the village is in a remote location, the natives aren’t very welcoming to people who come from outside. In order to build their trust, we reached out to a young girl, Rani Paswan, who was a Netrahat alumnus and a native. Having studied in Netrahat, a renowned school in Bihar, she understood the value of education and was enthusiastic about our proposal of opening an education centre in Karma.

Rani spoke to her natives and arranged our meeting with them. During those meetings, we would try to explain to them how education was essential to the upliftment of the whole community. It would not just educate the youth but also give them better job opportunities outside the village. Through our diligent efforts, we were able to convince them and inaugurate our seventh LitIndia library.

Many children didn’t know much about schools and had never had the opportunity to experience the joy of learning. Their first experience with books was at our library, where they were thrilled to hold books in their hands for the first time. They would spend hours turning pages, looking at illustrations, and exploring the content. They were eager to learn more about the world of books and wanted to read everything they could get their hands on.

The task of persuading the locals about education that once seemed insurmountable became a lot easier when the village’s youth became the torchbearers of education. Our education centre became a catalyst for change in the community, motivating the youth to persuade locals to come and learn. We encouraged them to find solutions to the problems they face daily to make their community a better place to live. Our goal was to empower the youth with the right education so that they could come up with solutions on their own. We taught them about sanitation, cleanliness, hygiene, and the concept of rainwater harvesting, which could enable them to solve the issue of water scarcity in their village. We showed them that education is not just about sitting in a classroom but also about problem-solving, leadership, and teamwork. This has empowered the village’s youth, giving them the confidence to think outside the box and become problem solvers in their community.