Engineer Quits Bengaluru Job, Opens School in Jharkhand

Yuvraj was nine years old and had never sat inside a classroom. In Ghatotand, a small settlement in Jharkhand's coal mining belt, this wasn't unusual.

As mining operations expanded across West Bokaro, the schools that served local families for generations were relocated 20 kilometers away. Company buses took employees' children, but everyone else faced impossible choices: absorb Rs 1,000 monthly transport costs on top of school fees, or keep kids home.

Yuvraj's father ran a small catering business and couldn't afford either option. His son didn't know the alphabet and couldn't write his own name.

Then Nitesh Kumar came home. After 15 years building an IT career in Bengaluru, he returned to Jharkhand during the pandemic and saw what had been lost. The missionary school, the company-run institutions, the complete community that coal had built was gone.

"I kept seeing our best people travel to southern states just for education," Nitesh says. "Those who could afford it left. Those who couldn't stayed back."

In 2025, Nitesh opened Nav Gurukul World School in West Bokaro. He charged Rs 800 per month, affordable for working families in the area. When Yuvraj walked through the gates that year, teachers didn't isolate him for being behind.

They sat with him after class for nearly a year. They taught through games and storytelling, celebrating every small win until school stopped feeling frightening and started feeling exciting.

Within one year, Yuvraj was finishing first and second in his class. He knows his grammar and multiplication tables now, and talks about his ambitions.

"He didn't know A, B, C, D," his father Rajeev Mukherjee says, still emotional. "Even when he is unwell, he wants to go to school. That is how much love these teachers have given him."

The Ripple Effect

Nav Gurukul now gives second chances to children across Ghatotand who had dropped out or never enrolled. The school uses interactive teaching methods that build confidence alongside academics. For a community that watched its infrastructure disappear as mining expanded, the school represents something bigger than education alone.

It's proof that leaving home isn't the only path forward. Nitesh's decision to return has created opportunity where there was none, keeping families together while giving their children futures they couldn't access before.

Yuvraj now rushes to school even on days he feels sick, and dozens of children like him have a classroom close to home again.