The central government in 2010 brought into effect the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009 which ensures free and compulsory education for all children till class 8. The Act mandated that private schools provide free elementary education, from Class 1 to Class 8, to EWS (economically weaker section) students — a move meant to ensure every child had access to good education. They were required to have at least 25 per cent of the strength of any class for children belonging to the weaker section and disadvantaged group. Delhi was one of the first states to start its implementation in 2011. However, the journey for students enrolled through the EWS quota has been bitter sweet, mired with controversies and small successes. In this series, ThePrint profiles three students who studied under the EWS quota in elite, private schools of Delhi.
New Delhi: At 22, Abhishek Sanag is the youngest strength and conditioning coach at Yonex Sunrise Shuttlers Academy, a badminton academy in Noida. His current clientele includes a 52-year-old paralympic athlete who won a bronze medal in the Rio Olympics.
He has also rented a spacious 2-BHK in Zamrudpur area of South Delhi that he shares with his 43-year-old mother and 20-year-old sister — a far cry from the one-room tenement the family lived in earlier, in the same area. Drawing an annual income of about Rs 4 lakh, Sanag is the proud breadwinner of the family, and rightly so.
His seniors and acquaintances describe him as an enterprising, confident man. However, Sanag wasn’t always like this. An alumnus of Tagore International School, his time at the private school in East of Kailash had come with its own challenges for the EWS student, he said when ThePrint visited him.
It actually gave him confidence issues — making him vulnerable and instilling in him a sense of inferiority as compared to his peers, he said.
Sanag, who joined the public school during his early years, was among the scores of students admitted into private schools under the EWS quota. His sister, too, joined him later at Tagore International.
The experience and privilege of studying in a good school came with the feeling of ‘othering’. There were multiple occasions when he couldn’t shake off the feeling that he didn’t belong, but one stands out in particular for Sanag. He was in class 4 then. “I still remember all my classmates were talking about making an ‘account’. The only account I knew of was a bank account so when I asked, all my classmates started laughing as they were talking about making an email account. My only exposure to a computer was to the one in the school lab. I felt really embarrassed after this incident,” said Sanag.
However, he added, it was also a school friend who helped him make his email account.
“I never went on any class trips or summer camps because my family could not have afforded the extra charges. I always felt that something was missing in my personality, in my education and in the attention and stimuli I was receiving,” he said.
Being an EWS student in a private school also came with the burden of fear of ostracisation, Sanag felt like he was always on the fringe of the classroom and whatever was happening there. He said, “I remember being ecstatic when I first got admission in that school. I was learning new things everyday, and my teachers were a lot of fun. But as I grew older, I started noticing the difference between my economic status and that of my classmates.”
“I also started to notice that my teachers never made the extra effort to help me. It wasn’t like they discriminated against me, but they weren’t really invested in me either,” he added.
It was sports that helped Sanag from falling into the abyss of self-doubt. And he is paying it forward by coaching children. He also aspires to get more certifications on fitness and further his study in this field.
“After all,” he said, “I need to focus on my own growth and success. I want to keep all the good things, forget the bad experiences from school, and build my career to make my family proud.”
Help comes in a frisbee
When Sanag was just 13, his entire world fell apart. His father had succumbed to an illness. His father had always encouraged his love for sports and pushed him to play more often, even scraping together funds at one point to buy his son a football kit. Sanag would spend time on the school grounds, playing with his friends.
After his father’s death though, he stopped playing football. “It reminded me too much of my father,” he said.
Today, an emotionally mature Sanag recalls how insensitively his peers had behaved then in his time of grief. “All my classmates knew that my father had passed away. I had to take a month-long leave. At home, it felt like our world had collapsed. My mother had fallen sick due to the grief. My peers in school would pass comments and make insensitive jokes about the condition of my family. Grades 8-10 were the worst years for me in terms of personal growth and my academic performance,” he said.
However, where the school and his peers failed him, sports came to his rescue.
Y-Ultimate is one among several NGOs across the country using the sport to inculcate sportsmanship, life skills and a sense of community among students of all classes.
Sanag found his community among these players. He says, “A lot of the children who came to play there were from similar economic backgrounds. Our challenges were similar and I could connect with them without the fear of judgement.”
As the Ultimate community helped him blossom into a young man who was sure of himself, Sanag started using his new found confidence in the classroom too. He said he slowly began participating more in class, even raising his hand whenever a teacher asked questions.
The sport helped him so much that now Sanag is a volunteer coach. On the weekends, he teaches children like himself to play ultimate frisbee, and imparts them life skills too.
Although this helped him establish himself as a good student, the avenues for growth were still limited for Sanag. “Taking science or commerce was not an option for me. That would require me to get tuitions for study and that was just not feasible. My mother used to work in a boutique and also did sundry tailoring jobs to run the household. I wanted to study and quickly figure out a way to start earning and take the burden off my mother,” he said.
Being good in social sciences aided Sanag’s higher studies in humanities. After his class 12, he said, “I wanted to study something that would help me improve my communication skills and since English is an important language for that, I decided to pursue it for my undergraduate degree.”
Sanag got his English Honours degree from Delhi University (DU) in 2022. He also simultaneously interned at the Decathlon store in Delhi to start bringing in a stream of income to support his family.
His younger sister, Sheetal, has followed his path and is currently pursuing her BA in History Honours from DU’s Mata Sundri College For Women. She is in second year.
Rohit Kholi, who manages Y-Ultimate’s coaching operations in South Delhi, said Sanag’s is one of their success stories. “Abhishek is a self-starter and takes decisions on his own. When he came to us, he lacked confidence and was unsure of himself. However, over the years, not only has he undergone a massive transformation, he is also one of our best frisbee coaches now.”
Meanwhile, the home situation has also improved. Sanag’s mother, Radha Devi, still works, but because she wants to, not have to. She takes pride in how her son has built himself into a successful fitness instructor. “It feels like all our years of struggle have paid off,” she said. “My son has made me proud. I don’t want to think about the tumultuous past anymore. Instead, I want to live in the happy moment and dream of an even happier future with my children.”
However, she has one complaint — Sanag is always studying or working. “His grandmother always complains that he has no time to go meet her. And sometimes I agree with her. He needs to take some time off with family and relax,” she added.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
Also read: Earn while you learn, bridge courses — UGC’s new proposals to help disadvantaged students