One thousand rupees in February
“My father said we would try again next year. I knew there was no next year.”
ILLUSTRATIVE STORY — not a real person. Replace with a real account, published only with written permission.
The Class 10 board exam fee, with the form, the photographs and the practical fees, comes to about a thousand rupees. It falls due in February.
February is also when construction work in Hadapsar thins out. In the year Rohit sat his boards, his father had three weeks of work in the whole month.
A thousand rupees is the cheapest place in this entire organisation to stop a child dropping out, and it is the one nobody offers to fund, because it is a receipt rather than a photograph. A child who has done nine and a half years and cannot find the fee loses all nine and a half.