Once lost to the blinding dust of stone crushers and the suffocating heat of brick kilns, a group of teenagers in Asansol are now scripting an extraordinary comeback — this time, not with bricks or boulders, but with bots and circuits.
At the FEED Campus, founded by social worker Chandrashekhar Kundu, these underprivileged children — many of whom once dropped out of school to work as daily wage labourers — are now designing and assembling robotics models that are astonishing everyone who witnesses them.
Some of their fathers work as masons’ assistants, some crush stones for a living, while others have lost their fathers altogether and watch their mothers toil as domestic workers. For most of them, education once seemed a distant luxury, a dream crushed under economic pressure. But what began as a mission to end child labour has now transformed into a quiet technological revolution.
Chandrashekhar, fondly known as “Foodman” for his earlier initiatives to combat hunger, decided that rescuing children from labour wasn’t enough — they needed inspiration. “These families often ask what the benefit of studying is,” he says. “When their children build a working robotic model and bring it home, the parents are amazed. They realise that education has the power to create, not just to survive.”
To make learning engaging, he turned the FEED Campus into a space buzzing with food, music, football, karate, and dance — but the real spark came with the idea of smart education. Lacking funds to introduce robotics, Chandrashekhar’s dream caught the attention of a doctor couple, Chandrani Pal and Rahul Sarkar, who stepped in with financial support. Thus, the Robolushin Club was born.
Under the guidance of Debnarayan Singh, a final-year B.Tech student from Asansol Engineering College, the students now spend several days a week building devices that combine creativity with social purpose. Among their innovations is a “blind-stick” that alerts the visually impaired of obstacles ahead, a reverse detector that stops a car automatically, and a smart wheelchair model designed to move independently. They’ve even crafted devices to monitor air quality, measure temperature, detect gas levels, and check oxygen and heartbeat levels.
“These students never miss a single session,” Debnarayan says proudly. “They are brimming with curiosity. The best part is — every model you see here is their own creation. To think that the same hands once pushed carts in brick kilns are now wiring robotic circuits — it’s incredible.”
The transformation has gone beyond the classroom. As the children carry their models home, their parents — once sceptical of education — now see tangible proof of what learning can achieve.
For students like Shreya Paik and Sangita Das, robotics is no longer just a hobby — it’s a vision. “We love making models,” said Shreya adding, “We’ve already built several and now want to study AI. One day, we’ll make our own AI-developed machines.”
From the clang of stone crushers to the hum of robotic sensors, the journey of these young inventors from Asansol stands as a testament to how education — when mixed with compassion and creativity — can truly change lives.
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PRANAB MONDAL
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