The electricity keeps cutting out, the Internet connection is crackly and the speakers don't always work, but Santosh Kumar knows that 20 pupils far away in eastern India are relying on him. Once a week, Kumar uses the Skype computer programme to teach maths to children in Chamanpura, a poor village in the struggling state of Bihar, 600 miles (970 kilometres) from his two-storey house in the suburbs of New Delhi.
The free Internet service allows the class to see, via a projector, Kumar's tutorial which includes an animated tale about a greedy priest and a wily countryman to teach the students about numbers and the concept of infinity.
"The first time I did this, they were really excited by the technology, now they don't care," Kumar said. "It's normal to them."
Kumar, a successful 34-year-old engineer, grew up in Chamanpura village before battling his way to a place at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and on to a well-paid job in the Indian capital.
"It's an uphill task to bring education to villages," he said, recalling his teenage years when he would cycle eight miles to college in a nearby town.
Kumar's cousin Chandrakant Singh, also now a well-paid engineer, decided during a trip back to the village to set up a school for children aged between 6 and 12.
"I wanted to provide a world-class education to students in the remotest place on Earth," said Singh, who remembers studying at night under the dim light of a kerosene lamp.
Source:MedIndia
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