Weaving Dreams

THE POUNDING OF THE power looms never stops at Patwatoli, a village in Bihar’s Gaya district. It resonates through tiny windows and large doors in the maze of narrow back lanes. One of the countless doors opens into a large dark room where a single bulb hangs from the ceiling. It takes time for the eye to adjust to the darkness. Inside the brick house, Gita Devi sits on the floor, her hands red from dying threads, the only means of livelihood for her and her three children, after her husband died a decade ago. But there is a ray of hope in her tired eyes. Her son Sagar has just cleared the IIT-JEE mains, the preliminary screening for under­graduate engineering streams at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). “My daughter also tried earlier but she didn’t get through. I hope Sagar clears the main exams,” says Gita Devi, who has herself never been to school, as she offers a glass of water from an earthen pot.

There are days, says Sagar, when his family cannot even afford two square meals. What troubles him most about his village, which falls in Manpur block, is the “andh vishwas (blind faith)” of its inhabitants. “There is so much ‘andh vishwas’ here. People leave everything to God. Belief is fine, but one needs to work hard and not rely entirely on fate. If I get through IIT and get a good job I would like to help poor students here get educated,” says Sagar, who scored 94.8 per cent in the IIT-JEE mains. His young­er brother Aman, who also aspires to study at IIT, is confident that he will get through.

Life here revolves around the power loom and IIT. Sagar is among the 40 students who cleared the IIT-JEE mains from Patwatoli this year, bringing the village of weavers into the spotlight. Outside, in Patwatoli’s Durga Sthan, the clanking continues. “We have been hearing this sound from when we were born. We have got used to it,” says Smita Kumari, who is now preparing for the IIT-JEE Advanced on May 18, having cleared the mains. When she first thought of trying to get into IIT, she was not sure if her parents would support her. Her father, Devanand Prasad, his hands black from joining threads at a power loom, does not want his children to follow in his footsteps. Her mother Hiramani Devi, who dries dyed threads, agrees with him. If she clears the advanced examination, Smita has her plans set out—she will go for English coaching and teach younger students. After studying, she wants to go abroad to work and support her family. Her brother, who could not pass the IIT entrance examination, has been her support, telling his parents that if she got through she should not be coerced into marriage till she started working.

The winding lanes, just wide enough for the iron carts carrying cotton, threads and cloth, lead to a yellow building with a poster outside ‘Vriksh Pathshala: Step Up for IIT-JEE/NEET, Free and Fair Education’. Inside, the sound of the power loom is fainter. Around 20 students are studying. Upstairs, a youth is teach­ing chemistry to 30-odd students, mostly girls. “Do you know isotopes?” he asks in English. A girl in the front row responds. After he finishes taking the class, Shivam Raj, a Class 12 student preparing for next year’s IIT entrance tests, says when he was in Class 10, he told his father that he was interested in computer science and information technology. His father, a businessman in Chakand Bazaar, about 10km from Patwatoli, told him IIT was the best for that. His father’s friend told him about Vriksh and he landed there. Shivam’s goal is to work on initiating a technology platform from India. “We depend so much on Google. There are other giant tech platforms. But none of those originated in India. I would like to focus on something that would be created in our country,” he says.

Some dream big. Others want to just live better lives. At ‘Vriksh Be The Change’, a trust run on donations from some of its former students, coaching is done through online classes by those who have gone to IIT from the village and those who have passed out of there. Besides, like Shivam, other students coaching there for IIT take an hour off from their studies to teach younger students. Chandrakant Pateshwari, who runs it in a part of his house, says most of the bunkars (weavers) are too poor to pay for the education of their children, and when it comes to a choice between daughters and sons, it is the girls who are denied education. “Now they send the girls here to study free of cost. This time, of the 40 students who cleared IIT-JEE from Patwatoli, 28 had got coaching at Vriksh and of them eight are girls,” he says.

Among them is Kashish, the daughter of Krishna Devi, the cook at Vriksh. “I am happy she has got through this test, but I am also worried about how I will finance her education once she clears the finals,” says Krishna Devi, who was widowed in 2014. The cost of a BTech at IIT ranges from `8 lakh to `10 lakh. The students of the village have been getting educa­tional loans from banks like the State Bank of India, UCO and Bank of Baroda, which are repaid once the graduates start working. At present at Vriksh, there are 120 students, preparing for IIT entrance exams, while around 400 underprivileged children go there to study after school, and are taught by senior students. Wearing Western clothes, even the girls from Patwatoli, where gamchhas are reeled out on looms, are drafting their own course, quietly breaking taboos.

THE story of Patwatoli is laden with par­adoxes—of hope­lessness and aspiration, illiteracy and IITians, being bound to threads and finding freedom from them. Yet most of those who leave pursuing their dreams remain tethered to their roots, returning, at least virtually, to help other students in the vil­lage where aspirations are amplified louder than the power looms. It all started with Jitendra Kumar, who cracked the IIT examination in 1991, becoming the first from Patwatoli to study at the prestigious institute. Speaking on the phone from San Francisco, where he works as an IT management consultant at Deloitte, he describes what has happened in his village as a revolution. After he joined the IIT in Varanasi, Jitendra would return home during summer vacations and mentor students every year about the institute and the “big opportuni­ties” it could open up. “In 1997, when a US firm employed me, it sank in. It was only then that the real dedicated drive began in the village,” laughs Jitendra, now a US citizen.

When he started studying for engineering, Jitendra was among his 15 classmates who did group study, learning from each other. One person from the village had cleared the IAS, but no one had studied at IIT. He took it up as a challenge, first getting into the Muzaffarpur Institute of Technology and a year later IIT. He started with mining engineering, but when he topped his branch in the first year, he had the option to switch to mechanical engineering. After graduating, he found a job with Tata Steel in Jamshedpur before mov­ing to the US. In 1997, one student from Patwatoli got into IIT, in 1998 three, and in 1999 seven. After that there was no looking back. It set off a chain of interac­tion between seniors and juniors, leading to a system that became self-sustain­able. Those who cleared IIT became mentors. An organisation called Nav Prayas was set up to coach junior students.

It was around then that, realising it wasn’t helping the underpriv­ileged students of the village, Chandrakant’s father provided one of his houses to students for JEE preparation, which was later called Home Centre. In 2013, Vriksh started as a library model, initially for children whose parents could not afford their education. In 2020, during the Covid lockdown, it began online classes by IITians based in various cities, several of whom, like Jitendra, supported Vriksh with donations. Chandrakant says that to date about 300 have got into IIT, including nearly 50 girls; the most in 2021, at 24, among whom there were five girls. Since then, an average of 15-20 students have been making it to IIT every year, around half of those who clear the IIT-JEE mains. Several of those who could not get through IIT went to other engineering col­leges. Patwatoli came to be called ‘IIT Village’, from once being known as the Manches­ter of Bihar because of its textile industry.

“We realised that this would gradually elimi­nate poverty. It brought about a social change in a village where there was near-total illiteracy. Girls also started getting inspired. I feel a similar cycle can be created in other villages too with a bit of help from NGOs, government and crowd sourcing,” says Jitendra. In 2015, for the first time, two girls passed the IIT entrance examination, motivating more to try—in a village where even if they went to school, they would have to drop out in middle school and were married off early. According to Jitendra, while IIT is a tagline that the village has earned, its inhabitants have also moved into other streams. Several of their families too, like his, have migrated out of the village. His father has sold his power loom mills. The smaller mills are be­ing bought by the “mahajans” or rich businessmen. But Patwatoli—where, as Jitendra puts it, weaving is the core competence—now has a second source of income.

When Jitendra got into IIT there was only one entrance exam­ination and no backward class reservation. Like most others in the village, he is from the Patwa commu­nity, categorised among the Other Backward Classes (OBC) which, since 2008, has had 27 per cent reservation in the IITs. The IIT-JEE cut-off percentile to qualify for IIT Advanced, which allows admission at the institute, is 93.1 for the General Category and 79.49 for OBCs and NCL (non-creamy layer). Of the 28 students associated with Vriksh who passed this year, 20 got over 90 per cent, says Chan­drakant who is a BTech from Cochin Univer­sity. He says there are plans to make a robotic laboratory and proper sheds on the terrace for classrooms, but these need more funding.

“My parents do not have the resources, so they sent me to Vriksh. I am studying for IIT, but even if I don’t get in, I will explore other options to study further,” says Arti Kumari, the daughter of bunkars. All bunkars of Patwatoli now want their children to go to IIT. As his power loom weaves red and white gamchhas, Anand Kumar says he would like his daughters, now in Classes Four and Five studying at Vriksh, to go to IIT. At the Manpur Durga Sthan crossing, Ravindra Prasad, who has watched the change from his hardware shop, says 10 years ago there was no education, but now the village has left cities behind.

Almost every student here aspires for IIT. Each one has a dream. As they prepare for the May 18 finals, Mantraj hopes to do computer science and Akash wants to do re­search in mathematics. While Patwatoli remains hinged to its looms, finding its sustenance in their rhythm, several of its descendants are escap­ing the labyrinth of its lanes, looking at a future outside it. Yet they look back, inspiring, nudging and coaching others to turn a new leaf just like them.

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