Dubai: She first came to Dubai as a 10-year-old. She studied in the Dubai Modern High School and passed out in 2004 with flying colours. Daughter of the CEO of a well-known private company, she did her Economics Honours from Warwick University in the UK, followed by a Masters in Energy Finance from the Imperial College of London. When she graduated, she had the best job offers in hand. Yet, she headed to the slums of Mumbai.
Meet Madhumita Subramanian, an unlikely 24-year-old who teaches underprivileged kids at their elementary worst. Selected by Teach for India (TFI), an Indian NGO, she was among the first batch of 87 outstanding college graduates to work full-time in under-resourced primary schools with the ultimate aim of achieving equity in education.
But Subramanian knows better than to romanticise her role. "I admit I initially felt I was trying to save the world. I got in as a strong idealist but have emerged as a strong realist," she told XPRESS.
After completing her two-year fellowship, Subramanian is a now a programme manager at TFI, mentoring younger students. But she vividly recounts her first day in school when she was assigned to teach 44 Class 2 students in Govandi, one of Mumbai's most infamous slums. The school had a monthly fee of Rs200 (Dh13) and the 1,000-plus children were from distinctly low-income families.
"When I entered the classroom, I was shocked to find one boy trying to strangle another. His left hand was on the other boy's throat and he was pushing a bench against him with his right hand."
Having grown up in the safety of Dubai, it was not easy for Subramanian to come to terms with her new environs. It was a "violent hub" in the underbelly of Mumbai. "I realised that the kids brought a lot of that violence into class. They would hit each other, use foul language, inflict injuries and make girls cry. The school was in front of a huge dumping ground and a lot of the waste would flow into the school during the rains..."
But that was where her inputs were required. And while she tried to instil in her students the transformational values she had been trained to impart, there was a huge learning for her as well.
She realised they were equal counterparts in an unequal world. "All they needed was the right exposure and right opportunities to be on a different life path. When I started off, none of my students could speak in English. By the end of the first year, half of them spoke fluently, the other half were well on their way. Their comprehension in maths grew by 36 percentage points." In her second year as fellow, Subramanian was part of a 15-member team tasked to set up 15 model municipal schools. The idea was to create model classes that would serve as catalysts for a larger systemic change.
Subramanian is preparing to move to Chennai as senior programme manager next year. She also plans to take up advocacy of child empowerment in a big way. "There's a huge buzz in India, an infectious energy and a great sense of community," she said. "But there's also chaos and frustration born out of income inequities. All we need to do is bridge this gap at the very basic level."
"I do not look upon my journey as being out of the ordinary but as one that every individual is capable of," she said. She believes youth like her are better positioned to undertake such initiatives. "Who better than youth like me to uproot the weeds of inequity as we have the luxury of choice and have experienced the benefits of education? My story, hopefully, will encourage more youth to take the road less travelled."
Teach for India
There are 450 Teach for India fellows and 100 staff members impacting 12,000 underprivileged kids in Mumbai, Pune and Delhi. Fellows undergo a five-week training to impart the Education Initiative Standard curriculum and teach in schools that charge a monthly fee of less than Rs600 (Dh46). Each fellow, teaching full-time for two years, gets Rs15,000 (Dh1,153) with housing allowance. They take on entrepreneurial roles to facilitate change in education once outside TFI. Visit: www.teachforindia.org