Sanjay Kumar

Sanjay Kumar- village Nawthnava, Maharajgunj, UP Sanjay Kumar primarily reports on issues related to caste and education. Sanjay Kumar has been a committed social activist since he was a child. When he was young, he excelled in school and resisted the discrimination that he faced as a lower caste schoolboy. Unfortunately, caste issues affected him beyond the educational system when the village’s dominant caste grabbed his family’s land. His family was forced to migrate, and Sanjay could not continue his education. Today, Sanjay wants to ensure that no student is denied the right to education. He incorporates video reporting into…

9th July 2015 | Bhatwa, Maharajganj District, Uttar Pradesh | Sanjay Kumar Jaiswal

Students at the Bhatwa Primary school were being cheated out of a government scholarship, which despite being paltry, was useful to buy uniforms, books and stationery. Community Correspondent Sanjay Kumar intervened with his camera and ensured that 132 students got their annual scholarship of INR 300.

To encourage more children to attend schools, the Uttar Pradesh government had announced a scholarship for all students at government schools. Students at primary school are to get INR 300 a year and at junior school are to get INR 500 a year.

Before Sanjay made the video, the headmaster and Village Head had both denied receiving any money towards the scholarship. Sanjay started a conversation about accountability between the school’s headmaster, the Village Head and the members of the school monitoring committee, a body constituted by parents and teachers to monitor the school’s functioning.