Lalung Primary school, Spiti valley, Himachal Pradesh

In 1947, when India gained independence, Lalung was an extremely remote village of a few houses, the inhabitants of which rarely venturing out of their high Himalayan cocoon…it was a two hundred kilometer walk in any direction. Today the village boasts of an approach road, a dispensary, a wireless set and a primary school. The successive governments have boasted of something more important—quality education for its school children. Sitting under open sky and biting cold, a bunch of school kids chant Ka-kha-ga (a hindi equivalent of a-b-c). Things may have changed since the independence, but between the lines of toil on this five year olds’ hands, there is a story not very different from what would have been six decades ago.