‘In Five Years We’ve Been Kicked Out Of Our Home Three Times’

Kranti’s Robin Chaurasiya helped kids of sex workers start again when traditional schools shut their doors for them.

Robin Chaurasiya’s krantikaris attending one of their daily classes. (Photo courtesy: Kranti NGO/Facebook)

Her story is that of grit and determination and truly exemplifies the adage, ‘where there is a will, there is a way’. Meet Robin Chaurasiya, founder of Mumbai-based NGO, Kranti who has been nominated for this year’s Global Teacher Prize. Chaurasiya is among ten others chosen from across the world for the coveted $1 million prize.

For the past five years, Kranti has been trying to enable children of sex workers in Mumbai start a new life through education. Some of the Krantikaris (students here are referred to as krantikaris, meaning revolutionaries) have made it to some of the prestigious global educational institutes.

While the world may have embraced the students of Kranti with open arms, treatment back home has not been so friendly. Speaking to The Quint, Robin shared with us some of the bitter experiences faced at traditional centres of learning, where prejudice and discrimination against these girls came to light.

It was not just schools shutting their doors for kids of sex workers, but finding accommodation where classes could be held daily has been a challenge in itself. Residents in neighbourhoods, even in a metropolis like Mumbai, were not comfortable with such a school being run in their vicinity. This narrow-mindedness has forced Robin and her students to move house three times in the last 5 years.

Sociologists warn about this peculiar kind of exclusion that often erupts in bizarre ways due to clashes between self-created factions of society. For Robin Chaurasiya and her students, this exclusion has been a painful one as people in their ecosystem chose to put obstacles in their path as they tried to start over. One is reminded of a few lines from the book Why Loiter , which talks about public spaces and accessibility of women in Mumbai, by Shilpa Phadke and others:

The increased exclusion of marginal citizens is reflected in the increasing public violence against those<i> seen to not belong</i>. This violence takes the shape of ousting people from their homes and places of livelihood, of tolerating brutal acts committed by private agencies and the state against certain groups and communities, and generally ignoring the basic needs of entire sections of the city’s population.