The school is even more unusual because Chamanpura has no electricity yet. The computers are powered by two large generators. In an undeveloped corner of a state that has long been synonymous with underdevelopment, is unfolding a story of remarkable enterprise and innovation -- in several ways, a microcosm of the turnaround of Bihar itself.
The hero of the story is 36-year-old Chandrakant Singh, who founded Chaitanya Gurukul Public School to "provide world-class, technology-enabled education" to the children of Chamanpura, the village in which he was born, and where he completed primary school by the light of a kerosene lamp.
A merit scholarship took Singh to DAV College in Siwan, and then to a B.Tech from BIT, Sindri, and an M.Tech at IIT, Bombay. Then came a one-year stint at Tata Steel, followed by three years at Bosch in Germany -- and finally, his current job as an R&D researcher for General Motors in Bangalore.
For a man of a distinctly academic bent of mind -- he got his first patent while in Germany -- it took, oddly, an incident of lumpen politics to fire Singh's dream. Three years ago, when Raj Thackeray's MNS was attacking Bihari migrants in Mumbai, Singh decided he needed to do something.
"I was greatly disturbed, and wanted to arrest the migration of students from Bihar, in my small way," he said. The first instinct was to get in touch with the principal of the primary government school in Chamanpura with an offer to fund six students who would pass a scholarship test. But the principal never conducted the test.
Singh then sought the advice of Surya Narayan, dean of IIT, Bombay, who suggested that he make a business plan for a revenue-generating, self-sustaining model instead of taking the charity route. Singh then wrote a 100-page plan -- a blueprint for a Rs 30-crore campus that would be completed over 10 years, including a school, an engineering college and an R&D centre. He e-mailed the plan to 3,000 friends, eight of whom agreed to fund it. With these eight and himself, Singh formed the Chaitnaya Gurukul Trust.
After the state government approved the proposal, the trustees met the villagers of Chamanpura and told them of the first step of the project -- the Class I-VII Chaitanya Public School. Within three months, they had 13 acres of land -- from 100 villagers who sold plots from 3 decimals to an acre in size, at a price that was 30 per cent above market rates.