New Beginnings

Foreword

In this report we share with you a truly momentous leg of our long journey. Two events impacted significantly on the structure and work of Eklavya. One was the closure of our collaborative middle school educational programmes by the Madhya Pradesh government in July 2002.The second was the bifurcation of Eklavya into two autonomous units - a'school education and publication' group and aʻrural development group. The latter was registered as a new society on August 11, 2003 as the Samavesh Society for Development and Governance. A total of 32 staff members of Eklavya left to join the new society on March 31, 2004. Shri Anwar Jafri heads Samavesh as its Director. Meanwhile, Shri Kamal Mahendroo took over as Director of Eklavya on May 1, 2003.

This three-year report has been divided into three sections. The first section provides a chronological narrative and analysis of the closure of the school education programmes and its impact on the Eklavya group, including our learnings from the entire episode. The second section presents a documentation of the responses of people from all over the country and outside on the government's move to close the programmes. The third section reports and reviews the work done under the various ongoing programmes of the 'school education and publication' group and the 'rural development group. We are aware that justice may not have been done in representing and reflecting on all the turbulence that took place during these three years. We present this report with humility. We hope that it will help in our struggles as well as those of others.