India’s education system continues to rely on the language of scale, metrics and standardisation. Yet, the deeper question remains largely unasked: What kind of space is a school for the child who enters it?

Across the country, for many children, school is where silence is rewarded, failure is punished and learning is divorced from life.

The data is not encouraging:

• As per UDISE Plus 2023–24, 47.44 million children aged 6 to 17 in India remain out of school. That is 16.8 percent of that entire age group.
• The 2023–24 academic year saw a decline of 3.7 million in total enrolment, with 1.6 million fewer girls in the system compared to the previous year.
• According to ASER 2024, only 27 percent of Class 3 students in rural India can read a Class 2-level text.
• Only 22 percent of those students could solve basic subtraction problems.
• Among adolescents aged 14 to 18, 25 percent cannot read at a primary school level and more than half struggle with elementary mathematics.

These figures do not simply reflect learning gaps. They point to an emotional absence at the core of the system. The child is present in body but not in voice.

In Panipat, Haryana, one educator chose to respond differently. Mr. Mukesh Digani, a former teacher who grew disillusioned with traditional schooling, founded Umang in 2012. His decision was not strategic but personal. After witnessing neglect inside an orphanage, he began teaching a few children informally. Over time, those sessions grew into an alternative education movement that now reaches children across classrooms, kilns and bastis.

At Umang, learning begins with trust. The school works with children who have been excluded from mainstream education: girls from urban slums, children of migrant labourers, and students who left school due to caste or gender-based discrimination.

There are no punishments.
No rote learning.
Children co-create classroom agreements.
Teachers listen more than they instruct.
Emotional safety is not seen as an add-on but as the foundation for any real learning to take place.

Today, Umang operates a full-time Democratic School, Maati Pathshalas at brick kilns, and outreach programs that include community meals and child-led storytelling sessions. Its impact is both measurable and personal.

More than 1,500 children have been mentored through its programs. Fifteen children from kiln sites have been successfully integrated into formal learning spaces. Mukesh did not wait for policy to catch up. He created an environment where dignity is not aspirational, but everyday.

In doing so, Umang is not offering an innovation. It is restoring something basic. The belief that education must begin with care. That children cannot be expected to learn until they feel safe. And that schools should be measured not just by what they teach, but how they make