THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: If a kindly engineer made the world realize that children of the Dalit colony of Kongapadam in Palakkad are no lesser students, it is the turn of Dalit activist and documentary maker Rupesh Kumar to show how it all happened. Only three from the colony had attended high school in the last 60 years and none of them had reached school final. Blame it on decades of social neglect and discrimination. Now, four years after Qatar-based engineer C.D. Sajith Kumar launched Ente Kongapadam project, 18 students have passed the school final in flying colours and joined higher education.
“I have tried to approach the documentary from an Ambedkarist point of view. The mainstream Malayali view was that people in colonies did not have the aptitude for education. However, my understanding is that there is a lot of enthusiasm for learning among students in colonies. But some of the may not have the opportunity, economic stability or the right connections for education”, said Mr Rupesh Kumar. Sajith Kumar chanced on the project idea while on a visit to his alma mater, the NSS College of Engineering, for the batch reunion. His visit to nearby Dalit colony at Kongapadam convinced him he could usher in the change.
A teacher at the NSS Engineering College, Palakkad, started sending her students to the colony to coach the children as part of the project. The engineering students, though volunteered to coach the Dalit children, were not free from the social bias. But their interactions with underprivileged children boxed them out of their own lopsided views, said Mr Rupesh Kumar, whose documentary, which was released online had more than 4,000 people watching it in five days.
When Mr Sajith Kumar recently narrated his experiences at the Loka Kerala Sabha, several MLAs wanted to replicate the model in colonies in their constituencies, Mr Rupesh Kumar said. The project also aims to bring children out of the colony framework through a regular dialogue with the world outside. The documentary was shot in two days at Kongapadam. I could very well grasp the energy of the people in the colony, especially women, said Mr Rupesh Kumar. The film has been produced by Sunil Kumar Sudhakaran. Editing and photography for the project was Premjith Natesan. Sachin Shaji Joseph was the assistant director of the documentary.
