Tomorrow, on Teacher’s Day, when 42-year-old Dhanraj Dudhakuwar will address a motley crowd of students and their parents at a local school in Gadchiroli’s Mauja Dholdongari village, the event will see another celebration. “I will be felicitating Dudhakuwar for his effortless contribution towards educating tribal children,” says Gopal Chandikar, who runs the NGO Srishti in Gadchiroli. For the villagers in the know of this special surprise, there could be no better occasion than this day — the birthday of master educator Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, to celebrate Dudhakuwar, the man who single-handedly scripted the village’s success story and transformed its education system within a span of 12 years.

The zilla parishad school in Gadchiroli’s Mauja Dholdongari village has only two rooms, and runs classes for students between Std 1 to 5 through the day