She fights for her community – but often against their beliefs. She battles for their dignity, but against their daily jobs. Those jobs, she wants to destroy. She thinks she may have alienated the older generation of her people, so focuses on the younger one. She is Kalpana*, just 33, but running a free tuition centre for children in Gomaspalayam. That is perhaps the oldest slum in Madurai in Tamil Nadu – with nearly 700 families crammed into 230 houses – right at the centre of a city more famous for its tourism destinations. These are families of manual scavengers, sanitation workers (street cleaners) or domestic labourers and caretakers. All of them are Arundhathiyars, a group on the lowest rung of the Dalit social ladder. Many, particularly the elderly here, think it is hard to get rid of ‘scavenging’ from their lives. “Somehow, my people think it is difficult to change,” she says. “They hate it when I campaign about it. They do not want to rub anyone on the wrong side.” So Kalpana tries to sow different ideas in younger minds. She runs a tuition centre – on her own resources – for 40 students, five days a week. Occasionally, it has classes on Saturdays, too. The centre is located at the community hall in Gomaspalayam and functions from 5.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. Here, she constantly exhorts the students never to “think of doing their parents’ job” and helps them with their studies. “I have been doing this for three years,” she says, “and will continue to do it as long as I am around.” It was three years ago that concrete houses were first constructed for the inhabitants of the 50-year-old slum. “Since this so-called renovation, I have been using this community hall [that came up at that time] to teach the kids.”



PHOTO • Krithika Srinivasan

This, even as her mother continues to clean streets day in, day out. “My father died when I was very young. If I tell my mother not to do this job anymore, she gets upset. She thinks it is only because of this job that our family could survive. She doesn’t understand that it is inherently humiliating. That we are doing this only because we are born into a particular caste.”

Kalpana’s tuition centre comes in handy for students like 14-year-old Kausalya, who finds it difficult to keep up with homework in her crowded and cramped home. “Ever since I began attending the classes there, I have been making it to the first 10 ranks in school,” says Kausalya, whose father Ramesh is a sweeper in Madurai. “I study hard because otherwise I will, like my father, end up earning only Rs. 6,000 after staking your dignity. I respect my father, he gives me everything. But I want him to come out of this vicious circle.” Kalpana often spends from her own pocket to pursue her mission. She earns Rs. 250 per day working as a community organiser in the women's section of the Madurai Municipal Corporation office. “It is not a regular job, so I also teach women tailoring at the Loyola Institute for Rs. 3,000 per month.”



PHOTO • Krithika Srinivasan PHOTO • Krithika Srinivasan