Patna:
9 pm at the local railway station in one of Bihar's Sasaram district. Amid the rush of passengers who are here to catch a train, a group of children sit on the platform, focusing on getting their ticket out of here.
This is where students in Sasaram gather every night to study. Amid the shouting of vendors hawking everything from bottled water to magazines, and the bells and whistles that signal the arrival of departures of trains, they tutor each other because they have no electricity at home. Here, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Sasaram has seen better days. It was the birth-place of famous 16th century Mughal King Sher Sah Suri, the original architect of the Grand Trunk Road from Chittagong, now in Bangladesh, to Peshawar in Pakistan.
The present is less glorious. Most homes see barely ten hours of electricity a day, almost never in the evenings.
Lights flicker because of low voltage.
The development that chief minister Nitish Kumar has been lauded for ushering has skipped this railway town.
Till one year ago, Rajesh Kumar was a 23-year-old who also studied at the platforms here. He passed his exams and went on to become a train driver. As he passes the children scribbling into their books, he tells them to keep at it.
According to the Bihar government, the central government does not supply adequate power to meet demands from different part of the state. That's the reason, it says, power crisis is worse than other states.
This is where students in Sasaram gather every night to study. Amid the shouting of vendors hawking everything from bottled water to magazines, and the bells and whistles that signal the arrival of departures of trains, they tutor each other because they have no electricity at home. Here, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Sasaram has seen better days. It was the birth-place of famous 16th century Mughal King Sher Sah Suri, the original architect of the Grand Trunk Road from Chittagong, now in Bangladesh, to Peshawar in Pakistan.
The present is less glorious. Most homes see barely ten hours of electricity a day, almost never in the evenings.
Lights flicker because of low voltage.
The development that chief minister Nitish Kumar has been lauded for ushering has skipped this railway town.
Till one year ago, Rajesh Kumar was a 23-year-old who also studied at the platforms here. He passed his exams and went on to become a train driver. As he passes the children scribbling into their books, he tells them to keep at it.
According to the Bihar government, the central government does not supply adequate power to meet demands from different part of the state. That's the reason, it says, power crisis is worse than other states.
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