A youngster transforms a village – Bharati, Gandhi and Vivekananda Way

On the 12th of June last year, I'd travelled to Kasuva, a little village near Chennai, to conduct a
training program for teachers at a school run by Sevalaya. This place is an hours journey from
Chennai Central by local train.
I had heard of ‘Sevalaya’ Murali from a few friends – that for the last 25 years he'd worked in TCS
and spent every weekend at Sevalaya and that he had recently quit TCS to devote all his time to
the cause. Of course, now I know that Sevalaya is regularly in the news for some achievement or
the other.

We were received by a young teacher, Jayakumar, and taken to the campus – and to say that
what we saw and experienced for the next 3 days was humbling, would be but an
understatement.

I discovered that the campus was living and breathing the philosophy of Bharathi (Mahakavi
Subramaniya Bharathi), Mahatma Gandhi, and Swami Vivekananda (BGV), and it was not just
Murali - his entire family has been completely involved in this project for the past 22 years. When
I read about him in India Today (27th July, 2009 Game Changers – people who made a difference
in education), I realized that he must have been barely out of college when he started this. So
what made him think of social service at an age that normally licenses you to dream of a
materially rewarding life?

Coincidence?
In Murali’s own words -
“When I was a school boy of 11 years, I happened to borrow Bharathi’s poems from a
classmate’s father. He was very reluctant to part with the book, as books lent to others rarely
come back, but I promised to return the book within a day. I borrowed it because I thought I could
finish it the next day, which was a school holiday. But when I reached home, I remembered that
the holiday was because it was ‘Saraswathi pooja’. The next day, as per custom, my grandfather
wanted all my books to be kept in the pooja room, and he even forbade me from any reading for
that day. Somehow, I managed to hide this one book from my grandfather, giving him all my
school books.

I started reading the book while my grandfather began his pooja. The book was more than 400
pages long, filled with poetry - and I was just an 11-year-old boy. I realized that there was no way
I could finish the book, cover to cover, by the end of the day, and hence decided to read it at
random. So I opened a page and started reading. The page was right in the middle of a poem,
and surprisingly, it was about Saraswathi pooja. It described exactly what my grand father was
doing, and went on to say that that was NOT the way to do a Saraswathi pooja - murmuring a few
‘mantras’, stacking up books, and offering sandal and flowers. Bharathi's command to the reader
was for him to find a town where there was no school and burn it down. What Bharathi actually
meant that you should strive to start schools where there are none.

Bharathi was also very categorical in mentioning that these schools were to be run free, for the
benefit of the poor. This, then, would be a real Sarawathi pooja.

The poem had a lasting impression on my mind, and I decided to perform the Saraswathi pooja
the Bharathi way. This was the first seed of Sevalaya.”

BGV
Moving on from Bharathi's philosophy was what Vivekananda once said - that if someone is
hungry, then food is the God for him. Mahatma Gandhi said, “India lives in its villages. If we can
improve the plight of a village, that is real service”. The common thread in the philosophy of all
these 3 great men is ‘Serve the needy’.

Inspired by strong thoughts of Swami Vivekananda, Mahatma Gandhi & Mahakavi Bharathi,
Sevalaya was founded by 5 young people, including Murali, and started functioning on May 29,
1988, with 5 children in a small rented house at Sivanvoil village. Classes began to be taught
formally in a school, from 1991. And despite its humble beginnings, the school has been
maintaining a pass percentage of close to 100% in the X and the XII board exams, for the last few
years now. While this may seem ordinary for many, one needs to know that these are first
generation learners that the school is dealing with - students here come from families that cannot
read or write.

A journey of 20 years

Many social organizations find it hard to keep up the drive and the finances for more than a few
years. But Sevalaya is clearly here to stay.

22 years ago, when Sevalaya entered Kasuva village, there was no school. None of the poor
children there were going to school, and they and their parents were happy to work in agricultural
fields and brick kilns for meagre wages. Today, the institution teaches 1,050 children for free, and
100 of Sevalaya’s products are in colleges, fully supported by Sevalaya. Some children have
completed their higher education, and have gone on to become software engineers and bank
officers.

Sevalaya also runs an orphanage, an old age home, a goshala, a small medical center, a craft
education center, a library, and various other programs and seminars for the benefit of youth and
women from villages. Vinobhaji Goshala serves the twin purposes of providing quality milk to
inmates of the Sevalaya campus, as well as to the rest of the village - thus having taken the first
step towards self-sufficiency. The goshala also protects cows from being sent to slaughter
houses.

The services and philosophy of Sevalaya extend beyond the campus and the village. The institute
has completed a 30-part course on BGV Philosophy in Coimbatore Prison; and seminars on
themes like Prohibition, Basic Education, and Communal Harmony are conducted regularly.

"I would not have, even in dreams, thought that my son will one day become a software engineer
and get employment in a big firm. I was just a small peanut seller in Thiruninravur station.
Sevalaya is solely responsible for this level of growth for my son" says Illayaraja’s mother.
IIayaraja,is a product of Sevalaya, now works for TCS, and is also a Trustee in Sevalaya.

Murali measures his achievement not by the laurels or the funds he receives or what his students
achieved. “When Sevalaya started, we had to go from hut to hut and spend a lot of time with the
villagers, trying to impress upon them why they should send their children to school. Today, if we
have 50 seats for children in a year, we get 500 applications. Most of these people are from
among the poorest of the poor, and they come to us because they have seen how Sevalaya has
helped children get free education, and more importantly, how lives have changed for those kids.
This is what is Sevalaya's achievement - the awareness of what education can do for an entire
generation.”

In nearly 15 villages near Sevalaya, there is no child labor now, as all the children there are in
Sevalaya’s school. The consumption of alcohol has come down due to our consistent campaign,
and the use of hazardous industrial waste oil in the nearby brick kilns has completely stopped too.
As there are nearly 10 colleges from the city, who conduct their 10-day NSS camps every year,
there are always nearly 50 to 60 youth engaged in community service, which ensures that there is
always some volunteerism in the air. In fact we have attracted even an American university to
conduct their camp in Kasuva village, and several students from many parts of the world are
always parked at Sevalaya, busy with different kinds of activities."
Passing on the passion

Catching hold of committed manpower is a challenge. As an institution grows, it becomes

impossible for the founder to take direct charge care of all activities. Work has to be entrusted to
staff members, who sometimes do not act with the same level of passion as that of the founder.
"Passing on the passion" is the bigger challenge in any such endeavour. Growth also brings
darker clouds like jealousy and defamation. Unproductive time spent on countering negative
activities like these is also a challenge. And needless to say, funds are a challenge for any such
institution, and as we get more money, we expand our activities to include more beneficiaries,
thus chasing further for more funds.

Sevalaya University in sight?

When Sevalaya was an elementary school, students would to drop out after the 5 th grade. We
then upgraded to high school, so that there free education is made available for kids till the 10th
grade. Students started dropping out after the 10th grade. This led to us upgrading to higher
secondary school, so students could start getting free education up to the 12th grade. We also
started funding bright students to take up college education. Now, there are 100 students in
colleges, who are funded by Sevalaya, and 20 of them are in engineering colleges. The number
is set to go up every year. The kind of money we need to spend on higher education is also
increasing every year. It will probably be cost-effective to run our own university! And we could
also make our education more rural-based, and at the same time job-oriented. So that is our plan
then – to run a free university, open only to poor, destitute and orphaned children.

On Sevalaya's website you find this text - Sevalaya means Temple of Service. Swami
Vivekananda calls the poor man as Dharithranarayana. Service done to poor and destitute is
actually the prayers offered to the God. Bharathi also says that he who can't bear the sufferings of
others, is a Punniyamurthy (blessed soul). As service activities are going on to such
Dharithranarayanas, the place is named as Sevalaya. Wish there are more Sevalayas?
I have gone to Sevalaya again this June to share more ideas on teaching-learning. The teachers
had been using some tips that I had given, like Jigsaw method for team learning. This year, I
discussed Graphic Organisers and ideas from newspapers and a magazine named Teacher Plus.
I received the following feedback from Murali, recently:
I spoke to all the teachers and also saw some of the classes where they are implementing
the learnings. It is very interesting and the "newspaper" method of teaching is a big hit.
On the whole the training was enjoyable as you have used many of the methods in your
class itself. So it became a live demonstration of the concepts you were teaching. The
teachers say the test results have improved and they will not call any child as slow
learner, it is just that different methods needs to be used to teach them. The message that
all children are not the same has also opened up their eyes to use different methods like
audio, video and activity methods.
The message of this article is that all of you have the potential to transform the world, and the
world is not some big thing, it starts with the person next to us. Most of the time we are waiting for
someone to come and change the system – but instead, let’s get up and take the first step. I am
sure, there are many Murali’s waiting to be discovered in the youth.

For knowing more about Sevalaya, visit:

http://www.sevalaya.org/home.html
The author, Dr Uma Garimella, is an expert on teaching learning process and regularly
conducts workshops for teachers and students. She is a consultant at Centre for
Education Technology and Learning Sciences, IIIT-H and Honorary Director, Centre for
Faculty Development and Management, NMREC, Hyderabad.