Abhijeet Dipke, the Maharashtra-based civic activist known for shaming municipal bodies into fixing potholed roads, is now turning his campaign toward crumbling government schools in tribal belts of Maharashtra and Rajasthan under a new drive called Adivasi School Thik Karo. The project extends his “Thik Karo” model of public infrastructure repair from roads to classrooms serving Adivasi, or tribal, children.
Key Takeaways
- School Thik Karo is Abhijeet Dipke’s next civic-repair campaign after his widely followed Road Thik Karo initiative.
- It targets government and ashram schools in Adivasi-dominated districts across Maharashtra and Rajasthan.
- The model relies on public documentation, crowdfunding, and pressure on local administration rather than waiting for official budgets.
- It follows years of CAG and NCPCR reports flagging unsafe, poorly maintained tribal school buildings.
Who is Abhijeet Dipke and what does he actually do?
Dipke built his following by doing something unglamorous: showing up with cement, gravel and a small crew to patch potholes that local municipal corporations had ignored for months. He records the “before” state of a road, does the repair himself or with volunteers, then posts the “after” footage — a format designed less for entertainment and more for public accountability. The implicit question in every video is the same one a corporator would rather not answer: why did a private citizen have to do this?
That template — document, act, publicise, embarrass — is now being carried over into School Thik Karo. Instead of asking why a road has gone unrepaired for three monsoons, the campaign asks why a school roof has been leaking for three academic years.
What exactly is the School Thik Karo campaign about?
Adivasi School Thik Karo is aimed at government and ashram schools — residential and day schools run for tribal students, many of them under state tribal welfare departments — in districts of Maharashtra and Rajasthan with significant Adivasi populations. The pattern Dipke has flagged in early visits is a familiar one to anyone who has read a School Education Department audit: broken benches, leaking roofs, missing boundary walls, non-functional toilets, and buildings that technically exist on paper but are barely usable in practice.
The campaign does not appear to be a government scheme. It is, going by Dipke’s own framing on social media, a citizen-led repair effort — funded through crowdsourced contributions and executed with local volunteers — that steps in exactly where state tribal welfare budgets have either not reached or not been spent.
Common problems the campaign is expected to target
| Issue | Typical impact on students |
| Leaking or collapsed roofing | Classes suspended during monsoon |
| No functional toilets | Girls dropping attendance during menstruation |
| Missing boundary walls | Safety risk, stray animals, encroachment |
| Damaged desks and blackboards | Students sitting on floors |
| Unsafe electrical wiring | Fire and shock hazards |
Why Maharashtra and Rajasthan specifically?
Both states have large tribal populations and a long paper trail of official concern about ashram shala infrastructure. Maharashtra alone runs hundreds of government and aided ashram schools for Adivasi children under its Tribal Development Department, and state assembly questions on their condition surface almost every budget session. Rajasthan’s tribal belt — Banswara, Dungarpur, Udaipur and neighbouring districts — carries a similar record of Comptroller and Auditor General findings on inadequate hostel and school facilities.
In other words, Dipke is not picking an obscure problem. He is picking one that government auditors have already written about repeatedly, just without the viral reach a public repair video gets. The Ministry of Tribal Affairs, which oversees welfare schemes including Eklavya Model Residential Schools, has itself acknowledged infrastructure gaps in its periodic reports — worth checking directly on the Ministry of Tribal Affairs website for anyone wanting the official version alongside the activist one.
Who benefits, and who would rather this stayed quiet?
The obvious beneficiaries are the students — children who currently study under a leaking roof or without a toilet they can safely use. Local tribal welfare officers may also benefit indirectly, since a fixed building removes a recurring complaint from their file without touching their own budget.
The less comfortable answer is about who is exposed. Every school that gets a private citizen’s repair crew is, implicitly, a school the state tribal welfare department failed to maintain. That is the same dynamic Road Thik Karo created for municipal engineers, and it rarely wins an activist friends inside government offices, even when the public response is favourable.
A quick comparison: Road Thik Karo versus School Thik Karo
The shift from roads to schools is not a random pivot. Roads are visible to every commuter and generate instant public sympathy — a pothole video travels fast because everyone has hit one. Schools, especially ashram schools tucked away in tribal talukas, are far less visible to an urban audience. That makes School Thik Karo a harder campaign to sustain on outrage alone; it will likely need sustained local reporting, not just one viral clip, to keep pressure on the departments responsible. This is arguably the campaign’s real test — whether Dipke’s model, built for roads that everyone drives on, can hold public attention for schools that most viewers will never see in person.
What happens after a school gets “fixed”?
One structural question hangs over any privately funded repair: maintenance. A repaired road gets driven on and worn down again regardless of who fixed it. A repaired school building needs ongoing upkeep — funds for repairs to toilets, electrical systems and furniture that a one-time crowdfunded visit cannot guarantee for the next five years. Unless local tribal welfare departments commit to maintaining what gets fixed, School Thik Karo risks becoming a photo-op cycle: repair, publicity, gradual disrepair, repeat.
That is not a reason to dismiss the campaign — for a child sitting through this year’s monsoon under a fixed roof, that alone matters. But it is why any serious assessment of the project should look past the “after” video and ask what the local administration commits to once the volunteers leave.
FAQ
Who is Abhijeet Dipke?
Abhijeet Dipke is a Maharashtra-based civic activist and social media creator known for personally repairing potholed roads under his Road Thik Karo campaign, using public documentation and crowdfunding to pressure local authorities.
What is the School Thik Karo campaign?
School Thik Karo is Dipke’s next civic-repair project, focused on fixing dilapidated government and ashram schools serving Adivasi students in Maharashtra and Rajasthan.
Is School Thik Karo a government scheme?
No. It is a citizen-led, crowdfunded initiative, not an official state or central government programme, though it targets government-run schools.
Which areas will the campaign cover?
The campaign is expected to focus on tribal-dominated districts across Maharashtra and Rajasthan, where ashram and government schools have long-documented infrastructure gaps.
How can people support or verify the campaign?
Dipke has typically used his own social media channels to document each repair and share crowdfunding details, the same format he used for Road Thik Karo.
Conclusion
School Thik Karo is less a new idea than an old, tested one pointed at a harder target. Whether it changes anything beyond a handful of repaired buildings will depend on whether tribal welfare departments in Maharashtra and Rajasthan treat it as a wake-up call — or wait for the cameras to move on.