The Better India · 48 days ago

Malati Murmu: a Tribal Homemaker Who Started a Free School in Purulia

When schools shut during the pandemic, Malati Murmu watched children in her remote tribal village slip further from learning-some had never set foot in a classroom at all. With a baby in one arm and chalk in the other, she began teaching from her mud home in West Bengal's Purulia district, going door to door to convince skeptical families who asked, "What will happen with education?" What started as a handful of hesitant students has grown into a thriving school of 45 children, many of them first-generation learners now studying in Santali, Bengali, and English. Malati teaches not just literacy but possibility itself, proving that a classroom needs neither electricity nor smartphones-only someone who refuses to let an entire generation fall through the cracks.