Computers to India
Mukerjee’s giving an awakening



GUILDERLAND — Jagriti means "awakening" in Sanskrit.

It is the name of a school system set up in India to teach children whose families earn a dollar a day or less; students learn basic arithmetic, language, and computer skills.
"This will enable them to find higher-paying jobs and break out of the cycle of poverty," said Zagreb Mukerjee.

Mukerjee, himself, is an outstanding student; he is a sophomore at Guilderland High School. Last year, his deeply researched and carefully-written paper on Mohandas Gandhi earned him first place in the senior category at the New York State History Day finals and a chance at national competition in Washington, D.C.

Also last year, Mukerjee traveled with two friends to India where his father lives and works. He brought with him a half-dozen old laptop computers, and gave them to Jagriti students.
"It’s a grassroots kind of thing for people of college age who don’t have the money to go to college," said Mukerjee. "Six or seven laptops go a long way."

Mukerjee collected the laptops after writing a letter to the Enterprise editor. He also collected over 50 solar-powered calculators. He said he is especially grateful to Alex Metzger and his family for their donations.

Mukerjee, who is 15, will return to India over the February break from school to attend his cousin’s wedding in Calcutta. The celebration for the arranged marriage will last a week, he said.

He is hoping to collect more computers from Guilderland to bring with him. People who have a laptop to donate can call him at his home: 452-3006.
"It doesn’t need to be a new computer; an ancient computer is fine — as long as it works," Mukerjee said. "It can be the source of several people’s livelihood."

The contribution is tax-deductible, said Mukerjee.
"Asha will give receipts for laptops people donate," he said. Asha means "hope." Asha for Education, a secular organization dedicated to change in India by focusing on basic education, is a United States-based charity.

Laptops are needed because electrical service is so poor in Kanpur, east of Delhi, where the school is located, Mukerjee said. There are power outages for 18 to 20 hours a day. The laptops are run from a car battery in the corner of the schoolroom.
"Laptops use so much less juice" than desktop computers, said Mukerjee.
"A little computer education goes a long way to help the students get vocational training," said Mukerjee. "They reach a higher social station by the value of a job."
He went on, "It can also help them get money for a college education."

"Giving back"

The Jagriti schools were started by Dr. Mahendra Verma, a colleague of Mukerjee’s father. Verma is a professor of physics at the Indian Institution of Technology where Amitabha Mukerjee is a professor of computer science, specializing in robotics.

The Jagriti schools are staffed largely by volunteers from the college campus, professors and students, said Mukerjee.
"We dream of a just society free from economic, social, and gender inequalities," says the Jagriti mission statement. "We provide underprivileged children a very enjoyable education in formal subjects as well as give them a humanist perspective of their surroundings, so that they can understand it and shape it."
"Dr. Verma believes, even if a school is run on charity, it shouldn’t just have the bare minimum; it should have access to the best resources," said Rita Biswas, Zagreb Mukerjee’s mother.
Biswas teaches international finance at the University at Albany. "We have a global commuter marriage," she said.
Mukerjee described the Jagriti students he met on his visit as "excited." He said, though, that there was "a bit of a language barrier." Mukerjee speaks Bengali as well as English; the Jagriti students speak Hindi.
"My mother spoke with them," said Mukerjee.

Biswas described talking to girls between the ages of 15 and 17. One girl, she said, was going to school part-time to learn to be a keyboard specialist. She had learned the Windows Operating System and Microsoft Office and was looking forward to learning PowerPoint and Excel.
"She felt she could supplement her family’s income and pay for college expenses" with her new skills, said Biswas. College costs "very little compared to here," Biswas explained.
She went on, "I was so touched that a laptop that had been discarded could bring such change."

Each of the students work for two four-hour sessions a week on the laptops, Biswas said.
"I was focusing more on the women, I’m always trying to inspire them," said Biswas. "They said they had read in the papers about the world IT force," she said of information technology. "They were very excited to be part of it."
Her own family is in the midst of it. "My husband teaches robotics," Biswas said, and he predicts that in our lifetime 80 percent of our bodies will be supplemented with artificial parts. Robots are now learning "natural languages" as opposed to being simply programmed, she said.
"We have heated family arguments" on futuristic topics, Biswas said.

Zagreb Mukerjee envisions a long-term charity relationship between Guilderland and the Jagriti schools.
"I think that here a lot of people have really old laptops that are sitting around and doing nothing," he said. "Here in America, we take so much for granted like computers and going to college. I feel so ungrateful sometimes. This is my small way of giving back."