A Story Of Nanhikali S. Nadhiya

Nadhiya is a bright girl at theAdi Dravidar welfare school in Puliyanthopu, which is a school run forScheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students by the Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Department of the Government of Tamil Nadu. Her teachers can vouch for how bright and sharp she is. But then, her excellent academic performance notwithstanding, she might have dropped out of school sooner or later like most other underprivileged students in India.

To understand the gravity of the economic backwardness of Nadhiya’s family we need not look very far. For instance, we might examine the income earned by her parents. The meagre monthly income brought home by her parents Srinivasan and Pramila, as cobblers, clearly reflects their precarious economic situation. The single room tenement in a slum in Puliyanthopu of Periyamedu Mandal, in which the 5 member family lives, is another manifestation of their economic backwardness.

Such being Nadhiya’s cheerless situation, she required some kind of a support system in order to sustain her good academic performance. In fact, she received precisely this kind of support from Project Nanhi Kali, which is a girl child education project that aims at providing 10 years of quality education to girls from economically disadvantaged backgrounds by giving academic, material and moral support.

Today Nadhiya, who is in class IV, is considered by her teachers to be one of the brightest students in the class. When we asked Nadhiya’s class teacher about her she quickly responded, “Nadhiya is a brilliant girl.”   Her Nanhi Kali tutor Hamsapriya is full of praise for this Nanhi Kai too. Asked about her ambition in life, Nadhiya replies with hope in her eyes, “I want to become a Computer Engineer. And with the Nanhi Kali project supporting my education I’m sure I will.”

We too are sure that Nadhiya will achieve her goal. We wish her luck for all her future endeavors.