In Patwa Toli village, Gaya district, Bihar, there is a constant whirring and the click-clack of looms that reverberates through the narrow galis (lanes). Away from this background ‘score’ of the weaving community, students studying for the Indian Institute of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE) sit quietly with their books in a double-storey building wedged between the houses. This is the Vriksh Pathshala (that translates from Hindi to ‘tree school’), a library that runs 24×7.
Here, students find the space, study materials and online and offline coaching assistance from teachers and former students to help them crack the challenging examination. There is also food and bed rolls for students to live or spend the night, all free of cost. Since the late 1990s, over 300 hundred students of Patwa Toli have qualified for the IIT-JEE and over 1,000 for other engineering examinations.
Senior and former students take classes in Vriksh Pathshala.
| Photo Credit:
SHASHI SHEKHAR KASHYAP
Patwa Toli, with a population of 15,000 people and 1,500 households, as per residents, is located across river Falgu on the eastern side of Gaya, about 125 kilometres from the State capital, Patna. Earlier, the impoverished locality was known as the ‘Manchester of Bihar’ because of its history of cotton cloth weaving. However, since 1996, it has come to be known as the ‘factory of IITians’. Now, students from other districts of Bihar too come here and stay at the library to work on their dream of cracking the IIT-JEE.
“The students of Patwa Toli can’t study at home because of the lack of space, the ever-present noise from the looms and of course, financial constraints,” says Chandrakant Pateshwar, 32, who along with some of his friends and seniors from the local government school, like Ranjeet Kumar, Dugeshwar Prasad, Prem Lal, Suraj Kumar, and Kishan Chand have been running the library. “About 80-90% of Patwa Toli’s population is of patwas (weavers). Most of them operate power looms these days. Only 30% or so work on the handloom.”
The motivation to be an engineer
In 1991, Jeetendra Prasad passed the IIT-JEE exam, went on to study in the Indian Institute of Technology in Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Uttar Pradesh, and joined a management consultancy firm in New Jersey, U.S.
“Whenever he came back to Patwa Toli on holiday, he would show the children a photo album of his American life,” recalls Pateshwar. For the children of Patwa Toli, the ticket to that life was an IIT education, which meant cracking the IIT-JEE. “In 1996, a few more students from here cracked the IIT-JEE, and by 2002 there were 25 IITians and 75 engineers in our village.”
Soon, children began to study together at three ‘home centres’, rooms which people who had large homes gave out to children, so they could escape the distracting sound of the looms. In 2013, Pateshwar’s family converted a double-storey building into a space for students to study.
“In 2022, a group of us decided to set up the library Vriksh Pathshala 24×7, giving online and offline coaching,” Pateshwar says. That year, 19 students, out of the 40 who wrote the exam, cracked it. In 2023, there were 12 students who made it to IIT, and in 2024, eight. “So far, there are over 100 IITians in Patwa Toli. Every household has at least one engineer,” he says, a tea cup in hand, in his father’s house, close to the library.
In his book The IITians, journalist Sandipan Deb, himself from the institution, says the IITs are a symbol of the fact that India, where vast numbers of people are still unable to sign their names, has created a system of engineering education that compares with the best in the world.
In the Vriksh Pathshala, students find the space, study materials and online and offline coaching assistance from teachers and former students to help them crack IIT-JEE. There is also food and bed rolls for students to live or spend the night, all free of cost.
| Photo Credit:
SHASHI SHEKHAR KASHYAP
Ranjeet Kumar, 42, who helped launch Vriksh Pathshala, says the only problem children have in Patwa Toli is the lack of an English-medium education. “Now, we’re exploring the possibility of starting something so they can read and speak English without difficulty,” he says.
The library can be entered from near the Durga sthan (a goddess Durga temple). Inside, students quietly read or work out mock papers. The kitchen is on the rooftop. Every evening students preparing for the IIT-JEE teach junior school students of the locality for an hour, for free.
Once set up, the library began to get small donations, like an iron almirah from a local branch of a bank. “We run the library on donations by former students who now work in local banks, and the Rotary club, among others,” says Pateshwar. Vriksh Pathshala is run under the umbrella of the Vriksh Students Federation, an informal grouping of people interested in educating local youth.
Living a prep-school life
Shubham Kumar, 18, has come from Sikandra area of Jamui district, over 130 km from Gaya, to stay at the library and study with the other students preparing for the IIT-JEE. The son of a medicine shop owner, Shubham had joined the library in June 2024, to prepare for the exam in January 2025. He wants to serve the country first and then students like him, so they get jobs that allow for savings and investments, financial security. “I would like to join either ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) or DRDO (Defence Research & Development Organisation). But let’s see what happens,” he adds.
Over 100 students from Patwa Toli, other parts of Gaya, and other districts in Bihar are currently staying at the library. “There are 30 girls too,” says Sunil Kumar, who teaches chemistry at Vriksh Pathshala. Sunil, a Patwa Toli resident, graduated with an M. Tech from IIT-Delhi in 2006. Whenever he comes home, he takes offline classes for students, free of cost. He is also a distant relative of Prasad, the first IIT-JEE qualifier from Patwa Toli. Kuldip Singh and Harjit Singh teach Physics, while Dinesh Sharma takes mathematics online. None of them is from the village, but they give their time seeing the students’ hard work.
Kashish Kumari, a 17-year-old student at the Pathshala, with her mother Krishna Devi, who works here as a cook. The two came to the institution after Kashish’s father, a powerloom worker, died in 2012.
| Photo Credit:
SHASHI SHEKHAR KASHYAP
Shubham’s friend, Sagar Kumar, 21, came to the library when he was about 10 years old and his father, a power loom worker, died. “After my father passed away, my family had no money to carry on with my studies. I came to Vriksh Pathshala and I’ve been here with a promise to myself that I’ll not budge from here without cracking the IIT-JEE,” he says.
Similarly, Kashish Kumari, 17, had come to the Vriksh library when she was just 9. Her father, also a power loom worker, had died in 2012. “We are three sisters and a brother. We were almost starving,” she says.
Her mother, Krishna Devi, is a cook at the library. “I’ll appear for the IIT-JEE for the first time in January 2025. I’m confident of getting a job that will take my family out of poverty,” she says. Seven other girls are from Patna; Ranchi and Deoghar in neighbouring Jharkhand. “The rest are from Patwa Toli itself,” says Kashish. “We eat, sleep, and breathe IIT-JEE. We cannot afford to waste our time,” she says. Her friend Smita Kumari, 15, nods in agreement. “We study about 15-16 hours a day. To unburden ourselves we only chat among ourselves, nothing else,” Smita says. Her father too is a handloom worker. The family’s financial constraints have forced her to stay at the library since 2022. She hopes to make it to the IIT-BHU. “It’s close to home and several students from Patwa Toli are there,” she says. Her only sibling, Aman Kumar, is a teacher in a private school.
Weavers’ lives and livelihoods
In the village, people say graduating as an engineer from one of India’s top institutes is a gateway to financial security and social status. “Despite working for over 16 hours a day, we only earn ₹15,000-20,000 a month. If our children don’t get out of this profession, they will starve,” says Meghnath Prasad, 42. His three daughters, 12 and below, go to Vriksh Pathshala every day.
Prasad and his wife Girija Devi run five power looms on the ground floor of their unplastered house. The constant whirr of the machines is a deterrent to studying. His neighbour Banarsi Lal, 48, too runs five power looms from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, weaving cotton towels, sarees, and bedsheets.
About 80-90% of the population in Patwa Toli is made up of patwas (weavers). However, most believe that the profession cannot sustain the future generations.
| Photo Credit:
SHASHI SHEKHAR KASHYAP
“The demand has fallen drastically these days and middlemen pocket the maximum share of the profit,” he says. Both his sons have B.Tech degrees and are looking for jobs. “Once they get jobs, our financial difficulties will end,” he says, confidently. Each power loom costs ₹1 lakh; plus there’s the cost of maintenance.
It’s a winter afternoon and a group of students has gathered on the rooftop of the library to have lunch. Krishna Devi is busy arranging plates with simple food: chawal-dal-tarkaari (rice-lentils-vegetable). “There’s nothing like having lunch in the late afternoon in the winter sunlight,” says Sunil. Around him there is a youthful hunger for the food, for learning, and for life itself.
Published – January 04, 2025 08:16 pm IST