Humble rickshaw goes hi-tech; becomes Edu-Rath for educating underprivileged

The humble cycle rickshaw – the most common mode of transport across the country and this city is now into a new high-tech ‘avatar’ – ‘Edu Rath’, a mobile school equipped with modern gadgets like laptops and microphone to provide quality education to the underprivileged.

University of Delhi’s Maharaja Agrasen College took the imitative with a theme of sustainable literacy. “The idea of ‘Edu- Rath’ was conceived to bridge the gap between privileged and underprivileged by providing quality education,” said Maneesha, a project investigator and professor at the college.

The ‘Edu-Rath’ has been running on streets in Dhallupura Village area of East Delhi for the last two months. “We now have a class of 40 students. Earlier, we have to move around promoting this kind of education but now students come on their own and often, come before the time of class,” said another project investigator Amit Pundir. The vehicle is being driven to the area, with two teachers, four student instructors, a coordinator, and a driver. The trained student instructors identify and screen the learners, typically in the age group of 5-17 years.

The customised design of ‘Edu-Rath’, atop a rickshaw coalesce all the important components of a school. It has mobile sections, which include computer literacy section and the laboratory section.

“In the computer literacy section, we have provided Edu-Rath with laptops in customised cases so that they cannot be tampered . We have provision of white board with a projection facility. The laptops are charged using the battery and inverter that is fitted in Edu-Rath. Also, it has all the basic items, including worksheets for various age groups, stationary items, speakers and microphone required to conduct a class ,” said Pundir.

Besides providing IT skills to students, it also has laboratory section which has a Physics lab, an Electronics lab, a Mathematics lab and an English lab  to generate the interest of students in science education.

Another most innovative part of ‘Edu-Rath’ is its cost. “The initial cost was around Rs 7,000 which included cost of rickshaw and batteries. Our recurring cost and amount for stationary items are paid using ‘Gyan Gulluck’ . In this, students and teachers in our college bring old newspapers from their homes and then we sell them collectively. We have now around 2,000kg of newspapers to be sold,” said Pundir.