The villages are truly deserted. Places where ancestors once sat smoking hookah are now overgrown with grass. The walls where family photo frames once hung have become dilapidated. The main doors are padlocked. Fields and gardens are covered by weeds and wild bushes. The courtyards resemble scenes of dead memories. Rural areas are silent and empty. In most villages, there are no young sons and daughters, nor children running around for fun. Against this bleak backdrop, Baburam Bhattarai quietly appears in the village life. Sometimes he sits in the courtyard reading Albert Einstein, at other times helps neighbors repair roads, or in dewy evenings plays badminton with his spouse. Whatever the case, he seems to be enjoying rural living.
During his stay in the village, he has gathered both sweet and bitter experiences. Like the taste of local chicken and millet porridge served by relatives when invited as guests, not everything about village life has been sweet. He has understood this in a month’s time. How rural communities are becoming depopulated? How the distance is growing between elderly parents and their children? How discrimination is increasing in school education? Hearing about these issues deeply troubled Bhattarai.
He writes, “At the beginning of Vindhyavasini Local School, I tried to argue that it is possible to achieve well even by studying in government schools, as I sat in the courtyard and listened to stories during my early education. But the matter is far more complex and sensitive.” He is not alone in realizing that in the past decade private schools have been dominating over government schools. Bhattarai has experienced firsthand the dreadful psychological impact on those unable to afford private education. For this reason, he writes, “The increasing gap between private and government schools is widening the chasm of discrimination in society. This generates new conflicts. Both the state and society must take timely initiatives to bring an early end to this issue.”
