The Retired Teacher Who Brought The School Home

The poorer students in West Bengal's Basantapur village didn't have access to a school, so this retired teacher brought it to them. 

"If I didn't take the initiative to teach them, where would they go?"

That's the simple response of Dwijendranath Ghosh, 75, when asked what motivated him to establish a school and teach village children without any pay, 15 years after retirement. Ghosh teaches English, facilitates teachers for other subjects and is the person in command at Basantapur Junior High School in his village Basantpur, located in West Bengal's Purba Bardhaman district. It's a school Ghosh brought home,  because the village kids didn't have any.

Ghosh has a master's in English and Political Science and a B.Ed degree. He started working in 1975 and retired in 2008 as an assistant teacher at Jamalpur High School. After retiring, he realized that his village was falling behind on the education curve. With the nearest school six kilometres away, students from poor backgrounds were unable to commute and became school dropouts. "The main population in the village is from SC, ST and OBCs who are economically backward. I wanted those children to have an education to improve their future," Ghosh, popularly known as 'mastermoshai' (a respectful term in Bangla for a teacher) told Silver Talkies.

He applied to the West Bengal government to set up a school in Basantapur and struggled to achieve it. Even though the request was approved in 2010, Ghosh had to wait until 2014 for the school building and infrastructure to finally be in place, allowing him to realize his dream. Today, Basantapur Junior High School has 140 students in grades five to eight, a significant number in a village where many wouldn't have stepped into a school otherwise.

But Ghosh, who was running the school on his initiative, without a salary, faced another major challenge. The four guest teachers appointed by the government retired in February 2023 and with no teachers, the school was on the verge of shutting down. Undeterred, Ghosh started teaching himself to cover for the lack of teachers and even asked a few of his former students, as driven by education as he is, to join. Currently, he teaches English and his former students teach Bangla, History, Science and Math, all without pay.

Ghosh has often spent out of his retirement savings to maintain the school, which gets an annual grant from the government for upkeep. But he travels to the main offices of the education board to appeal for more teachers and sometimes manages extra functions and other needs out of pocket. "The salary of a guest teacher is only Rs 5000 for a graduate and Rs 7000 for someone with an M.A/M.Sc; and at that range, nobody wants to come and teach here," he laments.

'Mastermoshai' is someone people in Basantapur look up to. He is after all someone who brought a school to the kids instead of the other way around. For Ghosh, bringing a school to the children of his village has meant not just bringing them education but also hopes for a better and modern future. Several students in the school have benefited from government schemes like Kanyashree. Designed to incentivize the education of teenage girls and delay their marriage until the legal age, the Kanyashree scheme provides a financial scholarship to applicants. "Eighteen girls from Grade 8 have applied for Kanyashree this year," Ghosh proudly says. The larger implication of this? Some of those girls may have been forced into child marriage, a common practice in the area, without a school to go to and the promise of an education. Some former Basantapur High students are now in college in Burdwan district. They are often the first in their families to pursue higher education.

This is the change that education brings, Ghosh says, awkward at being congratulated for being a changemaker for his village and the recent media attention he has received.

Ghosh was part of a team to establish a school at the beginning of his career in 1975. The school, Selimabad High, now has 1300 students and is a well-known name. "My dream is to turn Basantapur Junior High into a school like that," he says.

What motivates him to keep running the school after retirement without any government help or salary? "It's to enlighten the poor and backward classes in this area. I have a passion for teaching and want to continue doing so until my last day."

Ghosh is eagerly anticipating a change. Despite the inordinate delay in the approval of his paperwork, he is hopeful of receiving government-appointed teachers. Until that happens, as the clerk, teacher, and facilitator of Basantapur Junior High School, he is prepared to keep it running, no matter what.

Do you know of dedicated senior citizens like Ghosh, working for a better world? Share their stories or details with us and your encouraging comments for Mr Ghosh below.

All images courtesy of Dwijendranath Ghosh and his family.