Patwari said the "real boon" for the tribal students is the hostel facility. After classes are over, the classrooms become living and sleeping quarters for the 73 children now using the service. They come from remote villages that get flooded and become inaccessible during the monsoon months from June to October.

The hostel follows an ancient Indian education system called gurukula, in which students stay with their teachers and grow their own food.

The new school is different, Dishwa noted, only in that students do not have to cultivate the land. Instead, parents bring rice, legumes, vegetables and firewood every week. The children cook their food over earthen ovens, which every Tharu child knows how to make. Suman Garhwal, an 11-year-old third-grade student, said the children cooked meals in their own separate ovens.

The students also bring their own kerosene lamps to the school, but they are seldom used because the school has installed solar light panels for power supply. Juhi Kumari, a nine-year-old second-grade student, said she loves cooking, eating, playing and studying, instead of having to tend goats back home.

The school collects a monthly 50-rupee fee to pay the teachers, but does not charge for the hostel, so people need not impoverish themselves to educate their children. "After all, we must feed them at home, too, said Dishwa. Motilal Mahato, another Tharu, said the school allowed his people to dream of education, leading their children to government jobs and a secure life, but the school already is a dream come true for its founder.

Fr Joseph Srampickal, a Jesuit missionary among the Tharu, said the school realizes his hope to provide "basic facilities" for tribal children's education so as to end their poverty. Before opening the school, he said, he spent 16 years in Tharu villages, urging people to educate their children. Now, he can see a radical change in them and their children.