Chapter 33 of the book titled Some Outstanding Women Of India says ‘Elizabeth Mehta dares to challenge….’ It pays a tribute to Mehta who has been an active force in the Indian educational system ever since her arrival from the UK in 1968. In the last 15 years however, she has shifted her focus to mainstream education. Mehta is quick to emphasise, “I don’t think my educational vision has anything to do with my coming from another country. I am not just another lady who has come to India. I am an educationalist first and foremost. The programme is what matters to me the most.”

Her passion to help the disabled set afire by her own sister-in-law’s disability, Mehta joined the Spastic Society of India where she experienced another turning point in life. One of her female students was not making sufficient progress and when a visiting psychologist from the UK was consulted on the matter, he pointed out where she was going wrong; setting goals for the child and trying to make her match these goals instead of tracking her individual progress. That, she realised, was what most schools in India were doing, trying to bring all the students up to one level through examinations even though all children develop at a different rate and frequency. “I realised that things need to change. Children do matter and they had simply got lost in the whole educational system.”

Work with the Aga Khan Educational Service came next and, as Mehta travelled through the interiors of Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, she uncovered more issues – the irregular student-teacher ratio, an insufficient interaction between the child and the teacher and the lack of cultural affinity between most teachers for students who came from bastis or slums – that were causing more problems in the system. Deciding to use her small family trust, Mehta went into community service, setting up Muktangan in 2003. As the children grew more confident, this unique ‘inclusive’ programme with emphasis on teacher training slowly snowballed into an organisation wholly supported by parents, the community and the BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation).

Currently catering to children till the fourth standard, Mehta is gearing up for big plans of expanding and adding a grade every year. The teachers are the key facilitators in this programme and with a 100 teachers being trained every year, preparations are well on their way. I am given the grand tour of the facilities. Twenty-eight teachers are currently being trained in a room. On the board is scribbled in chalk – ‘We shall overcome some day.’ In the library – Tell Me What, Tell Me Why, Tell Me More, Tell Me Everything – books are waiting to be borrowed by the children. In the classroom – important instructions are pinned up – ‘Plan Time, Work Time, Recall Time’ and the children respond. They are slowly and steadily blossoming into spontaneous, caring and cooperative little people.

Besides being at school every morning, the real work for the day, Mehta tells me, begins at 6 p.m. and ends way past 10 every night. “That’s when all the planning, writing and proposal work happens.” But the complete support from her own three children who have taken after her makes it a little smoother.