Anirban Nandy and Poulami Nandy — PhD scholars from IIT Kharagpur in rural development have declined an offer to study post-doctorate in the United States of America to help kids in North Bengal villages have access to better education. The husband-wife duo has created a mobile library which helps students stay in touch with the latest books as well as offers supplementary classes.
This mobile library carries textbooks for children; most of them have been collected from urban households of Siliguri while others were purchased by the duo. Over 5,200 books are currently present in this mobile van library.
Anirban and his wife Poulami take this van to 30 villages of North Bengal.
They provide study books to village children and renew these books every three months.
Not only books, but the mobile library also offers tuition to village kids for Rs 10. From Spoken English to Computers this couple teaches varied courses to kids living in villages of North Bengal.
Anirban’s father was a farmer and his mother was a nurse, he always had an interest in working for the village.
While pursuing research at IIT Kharagpur on rural development he discovered various problems of villagers. Poulami was his research assistant at that time. Both of them got married eventually.
Speaking to News18 Anirban said, “Mobile library connects with people, we need to empower more people. We got the opportunity to stay outside India and do post-doctorate but seeing smiles on the faces of village women, and kids; empowering them gives us happiness. The theories which we were supposed to promulgate from AC room now we are doing it from these village houses that is our satisfaction.”
The villages of Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling , Alipurduar mostly are really garden villages. Anirban and Poulami’s organization ‘live life happily’ trains mothers of villages and empowers them. Now their team has more than 8000 women who work as a self-help group.
Speaking to News 18 Poulami said, “I feel a different level of satisfaction we have, we could not have gotten more satisfaction anywhere else. We are working on personal and social development together, that’s great.”
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