Ranchi: Seven-year-old Alex Munda sits on a small blue plastic chair outside his two-room mud house and reads aloud from a textbook: “Dot, pot, lot, got.” Soon it will be evening and the house will go dark. He no longer studies at the neon-lit petrol pump where his mother works after a photo of him reading there went viral in December. The place that made him visible even to Chief Minister Hemant Soren is no longer accessible to him.
“Even now people still come and ask for Alex. Sometimes he gets scared, so now I keep him at home,” said his mother Nutan Toppo, who works as a petrol pump attendant at Ranchi’s Sukuruhutu Hindustan Petroleum station. Ever since her husband died in 2018, she has raised him alone.
For the last three years, Alex would come to the pump after school to play, eat, and catch up on schoolwork. Last month, a customer who came to refuel his bike noticed Alex studying, took a photo and video, and posted them on social media. The story tugged at heartstrings in Jharkhand and beyond, and also sparked discussions on the makeshift solutions tribal families are forced to devise when even basic government services aren’t available to them.
Now the tribal family has become a poster child for resilience and government responsiveness. CM Soren responded to the photo on X and ordered the Ranchi deputy commissioner to “provide every possible assistance for Alex’s studies.” A school fee waiver has come and an electricity connection is “in process”. Media personnel, YouTubers, panchayat members, and officials from the DC office have all flocked to see the boy who studies under the pump’s dim light. Hashtags such as RealLifeHeroes and Struggle to Success accompany social media posts. Daily Jagran captioned the video, ‘Under petrol pump lights, a mother teaches her son and lights his future’; Satta Sudhar went with ‘Maa ki mehnat, Alex Munda ka sapna.’
“The petrol pump has always been Alex’s place, just like it is his mother’s workplace. Now people come here more to ask about Alex than to check fuel availability,” said Balit Kumar, the 40-year-old manager of the petrol pump.
For now, though, this has brought isolation for Alex, who rarely goes to the petrol station to escape the gauntlet of cameras and questions.
“Mummy jab bahar jaati hai, bahar bethte hai, andar light nahi hai” (Sometimes, when mummy goes out without me, I sit outside because it’s dark inside the house), said Alex as he raced against the sunset to finish the day’s reading.
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Why the petrol pump
Labyrinthine red tape is the main reason why the family’s house remains in darkness. After the death of Toppo’s husband, the electricity connection was never transferred under her name and the supply was cut off due to procedural issues and unpaid bills. And so she did what she could.
“I will make sure my child studies, whether it’s by the light of the petrol pump or by the glow of a candle,” she said.
To show the interior of the house, Toppo switches on her mobile phone torch. The first room has two tiny red plastic chairs and a bed pushed against the wall. The second room stays dark even during the day, with a mud chulha and bundles of firewood stacked for cooking in one corner.
People taunt me, asking whether I got the benefits or not. Or say I only received promises like many others
-Nutan Toppo, Alex’s mother
“We mostly use candles and emergency lights, which I charge at the petrol pump or at a neighbour’s house,” said Toppo, who has studied until class 10.
Over the years, she attempted several times to get a new connection under her name but it was an obstacle course of paperwork.
“There was always some document missing or I was asked to come another day. After several attempts, I just stopped going,” she added.
After the photo went viral, things began to move. Following CM Soren’s directions on 21 December, Toppo received a call from the office of Ranchi Deputy Commissioner Manjunath Bhajantri and met him at his office.
An image of this meeting was widely circulated on social platforms. Some praised the government’s quick action, while others questioned why a viral post was needed. “Aise LAKHO bachhe hai jharkhand me,” said one comment on X—there are lakhs of children like this. Another, in Hindi, said it was “unbelievable” that “now you have to spread it on social media to get any government help.”
रांची में पेट्रोल पंप की रौशनी में पढ़ने वाले बच्चे एलेक्स मुंडा और उनकी मां नूतन टोप्पो के संघर्ष की कहानी आपलोगों ने देखी। मामले में मुख्यमंत्री @HemantSorenJMM जी ने संज्ञान लिया। उसके बाद आज रांची DC मंजूनाथ भजन्त्री ने उन्हें बुलाया और हर संभव मदद का भरोसा दिलाया। फ़िलहाल… pic.twitter.com/nN2sw8KHtn
— Sunny Sharad (@sunny_sharad) December 22, 2025
Toppo said Bhajantri has assured her that electricity would be provided and that the family would soon receive a permanent house under the Ambedkar Awas Yojana.
“Officials from the DC office visited our house and Alex’s school to help, and the process has started. They made me fill out some forms,” said Toppo. She added that the DC office staff accompanied her to the school and that Alex would no longer have to pay fees for his education.
The village panchayat head, Anita Munda, said all possible assistance is being provided to Toppo.
The facilities are there, but sometimes people don’t want to face the long procedures, and no one listens to them easily when they visit government offices
-Anita Munda, sarpanch
“We visited her house, helped her fill forms for the widow pension scheme, the ration card, and coordinated with officials to get electricity soon,” said Munda. In this tribal belt, she added, most people are daily-wage earners who cannot afford to lose a day’s pay to navigate government offices.
“We make sure she doesn’t have to spend whole days visiting offices. The facilities are there, but sometimes people don’t want to face the long procedures, and no one listens to them easily when they visit government offices,” Munda said.
She added that the village has 11 wards, of which Ward Number 1, where Alex lives, is the most underdeveloped and predominantly inhabited by Scheduled Tribe communities. Many men here are unemployed and struggle with alcohol addiction, according to her.
“People don’t even want to work or take advantage of government schemes because the men are often under the influence of alcohol,” Munda said.
Meanwhile, the ongoing nature of the process has bred cynicism in the village. Some residents even taunt Toppo.
“People ask whether I actually received anything or say I’ve only got promises, like many others,” she said.
Meanwhile, the “ongoing” nature of the process has led to cynicism in the village. Some even tease Toppo.
“People taunt me, asking whether I got the benefits or not. Or say I only received promises like many others,” she said.
Domino effect
Forty-year-old Sarita Devi, wearing a maroon saree, leans against the wall of her kachha house. She watches the daily crowd that gathers in front of Alex’s house—people taking videos, asking questions, and sometimes even visiting her to inquire about the mother-son duo and the lack of electricity.
In a relatively new development, Devi’s three-room house is also shrouded in darkness, lit only by oil lamps and emergency lights charged elsewhere. The family hasn’t applied for a new electricity connection here, since they expect to move soon to a new house that they are building.
“Some officials visited our house and said there are a few thousand rupees in unpaid bills that need to be cleared to get the electricity back. We don’t have the money to pay, and we didn’t know what to do next,” Devi said.
Jab light ayega, ektu TV lenge aur cartoons dekhenge (once we have electricity, we will buy one TV and enjoy cartoons)
-Alex Munda, 8
For more than eight months, the family has lived without power, putting up with it because of the impending move. But after Alex’s video went viral and officials began visiting the area, Devi is optimistic that her home will receive attention too.
Several homes in the village still lack electricity due to a lack of information regarding procedural matters, according to Anita Munda, who is now also helping other families with missing documents and unpaid bills.
“People hesitate to ask for help because they fear being neglected, but now, because of Alex, many others are receiving assistance,” she said.
Naveen Munda, another neighbour, sits outside his under-construction house. He too has applied for a new connection for his own family of four. The throng of mediapersons and officials has made him optimistic.
“We will soon get electricity,” he said. “Alex has made himself and the village famous.”
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Alex’s wish
Toppo has had to change her routine now that Alex can no longer roam freely around the petrol pump. She now takes the morning shift so she can be free by the afternoon to stay with him at home.
When she does have to work evenings, Alex is confined to a small room there. Toppo’s colleagues often check in on him and even help him with his homework.
“We have seen him growing up here, and he is like our child,” said 28-year-old Sushil Tiwari, another employee at the pump, filling petrol into a bike in the queue.
The boy at the centre of the commotion doesn’t quite understand it. When people approach him and pepper him with questions, Alex either smiles shyly or hides behind his mother. But more than anything, he’s excited about the prospect of a TV at home—more than electricity itself.
“Jab light ayega, ektu TV lenge aur cartoons dekhenge (once we have electricity, we will buy one TV and enjoy cartoons),” said Alex.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)