Every morning, 18-year-old Mohini Parmar cooks, cleans, and helps prepare her younger siblings for the day. Her father died during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving her as the eldest child in the family. Once the household work is done, she walks 500 metres from her home in Dholpur to study at the local Digital Samvidhan Ghar.
A few years ago, a space like this did not exist in her village.
Mohini once dreamt of joining the Air Force. “My motive is only to become a soldier,” she says with certainty. Preparing for the entrance exam pushed her to teach herself English from scratch because the exam required it.
Today, she says proudly, she can teach English to children up to Class 10. While she is now preparing for the Rajasthan Eligibility Examination for Teachers (REET) instead, her determination remains unchanged.
What changed was access to a place where she could learn consistently, safely, and close to home.
Mohini’s experience lies at the heart of a wider transformation unfolding across Rajasthan’s Dholpur district.
In the ravines of Chambal, a region long deprived of basic educational infrastructure and modern facilities, abandoned government buildings are being transformed into digital learning hubs. Students prepare for competitive examinations late into the night, women return to studying after marriage, and children who once saw cities as their only chance at opportunity are discovering that learning can exist much closer to home.
At the heart of this transformation is the Digital Samvidhan Ghar initiative, a district-wide network of community learning centres developed since 2024, under the leadership of IAS officer Nivrutti Avhad, CEO of Zila Parishad Dholpur.
In many villages, girls and married women now have a safe place close to home to continue their education, thanks to the Digital Samvidhan Ghar initiative.
What started with a few abandoned government buildings has now grown into 78 digital libraries across Dholpur, including in remote villages near the Chambal that had long lacked such facilities.
Mohini is among approximately 5,000 students who have registered at the Samvidhan Ghars, which have helped create a district-wide digital learning network across Dholpur.
Students once had to leave Dholpur to prepare
To understand why these centres matter so deeply, one must first understand Dholpur itself.
Dholpur lies on Rajasthan’s eastern edge, along the Chambal River, surrounded by deep ravines, rocky land, scattered villages, and thick forests. For decades, this difficult terrain shaped both how the district was seen and how people lived.
The Chambal ravines remained cut off for years, with many villages long deprived of educational infrastructure, coaching centres, libraries, and digital access.
Even today, travelling to nearby towns for exam preparation is expensive and difficult for many families.
Against this backdrop, in Gram Panchayat Pipret near the Chambal region, sarpanch Dharmendra Singh Parmar describes the transformation unfolding around him with visible disbelief. “Jungle mein aake mangal kiya hai,” he says. Meaning “prosperity has arrived in the jungle”.
“We never imagined our children would sit in AC rooms and study,” he adds. “It was something we had only seen in pictures.”
Dharmendra’s own journey mirrors the changing aspirations of the district. An MBA graduate from Christ University in Bengaluru, he left behind a corporate career in 2018 and returned to his village, a decision many around him struggled to understand at the time.
“I had never heard of anyone leaving a Bengaluru job to come back and work for their village,” he says with a smile.
IAS officer Nivrutti Avhad envisioned unused public buildings as learning spaces, an idea that has grown into a network of 78 Digital Samvidhan Ghars across Dholpur.
After becoming sarpanch in January 2020, just weeks before the pandemic, he helped build one of the district’s most active learning centres in his panchayat.
Students preparing for UPSC, RAS, NDA, and army recruitment examinations now spend long hours there every day. Within the first few months after the library opened, three students had already cleared army selection.
“The children who could never afford Jaipur are studying here now,” Dharmendra says. “That feeling of being left behind because you could not go to the city has started disappearing.”
The idea that began with a buffalo in an abandoned building
The story of how these centres began takes us back to IAS officer Nivrutti Avhad. During village visits for a constitutional awareness campaign called ‘Kitab Ka Pehla Panna’ in 2025, he began noticing abandoned government buildings across rural Dholpur.
Some had become storage spaces. Others housed livestock or had been taken over by pests and wild animals.
“When you visited villages, there would always be these empty buildings with buffaloes and grass inside,” he recalls. “People complained about it, but I never paid much attention.”
Over time, however, he began looking at these neglected structures differently. He wondered if they could become spaces for learning and community life.
The buildings still had potential; they had simply lost purpose.
“We thought of retrofitting them,” he says.
That simple idea would eventually grow into one of rural Rajasthan’s most ambitious grassroots learning initiatives.
The name itself was chosen carefully. Nivrutti Avhad called them Samvidhan Ghars, or houses of the Constitution, to ensure the initiative stood for dignity, equality, and access. He also wanted its identity to extend beyond any particular administration or political cycle.
“Samvidhan means justice, equality, and dignity,” he explains. “These centres are built around those ideas.”
Eighteen-year-old Mohini Parmar walks just 500 metres from her home each day to study at her village’s Digital Samvidhan Ghar, where she is preparing for the REET exam after teaching herself English.
The first phase involved converting 18 unused public buildings into functioning libraries and learning spaces. Former schools, old panchayat halls, and abandoned hospitals were slowly renovated and reopened for community use. At that stage, the team focused on making educational spaces available and functional. The district-wide digital network came later.
But the response from villages changed the scale of the initiative entirely.
Why villages began raising money for libraries
As the first few centres began functioning, neighbouring villages started approaching the administration with requests for their own Samvidhan Ghars. Communities that had spent years without public learning spaces suddenly saw children studying close to home, young women attending regularly, and students preparing for competitive exams within their own villages.
“It became competitive,” says Devendra, an NGO coordinator who has been associated with the project since its early stages. “People started saying, ‘We are ready to give Rs 2 lakh. We have an empty hall. Just give us a library.'”
That community demand helped the initiative expand rapidly across the district.
SBI Card later supported 28 of the digital libraries through CSR funding of Rs 2.2 crore, while IIFCL contributed Rs 4.2 crore towards another 50 centres. MLA Area Development (MLAADS) Scheme funds have also been used to support libraries in the Baseri constituency area.
Today, 78 Digital Samvidhan Ghars operate across Dholpur, including in the remote daang (elevated rocky terrain) areas near the Chambal where educational infrastructure had historically remained weak.
What makes these centres particularly distinctive is that they function as much more than libraries.
As evening falls over the Chambal ravines, the lights remain on inside Digital Samvidhan Ghars, where children, women, and young aspirants continue studying long after sunset.
Each Samvidhan Ghar is equipped with computers, smart televisions, books catalogued using QR codes, printers, solar panels, CCTV cameras, RO water systems, and renovated toilets. The centres remain open for long hours, often from morning until late at night, allowing students to study around work, household responsibilities, and agricultural schedules.
In several villages, the libraries have effectively become digital learning hubs where students access online material, prepare for examinations, attend workshops, and participate in community discussions.
The ‘samvidhan sakhis’ opening doors for girls
A key decision behind the initiative was placing women at the centre of its management structure.
Every Samvidhan Ghar is managed by a ‘Samvidhan Sakhi’, a woman selected from the village’s self-help groups to oversee daily operations, maintain records, coordinate activities, and ensure the space remains welcoming and accessible. She receives a monthly stipend and often becomes the face of the initiative within the village.
Nivrutti Avhad says the decision was intentional from the beginning.
“We have deliberately kept women in charge,” he says. “No politics, only didi will come. So nobody can say no to didi.”
That choice has fundamentally changed who uses these spaces.
Gram Panchayat Pipret’s Digital Samvidhan Ghar has become a hub where aspirants prepare for UPSC, RAS, NDA, army recruitment, and other competitive examinations.
In many villages across Dholpur, boys are more likely to be sent outside the district for higher studies, while girls often remain behind due to safety concerns and social restrictions.
By creating local learning spaces managed by women from the same community, the Samvidhan Ghars have made education feel far more accessible for girls and women.
Today, girls form a significant share of daily visitors across many centres. Married women have started returning to study after weddings.
One pregnant woman regularly attended a library while preparing for a teaching examination because, for the first time, the opportunity existed close enough for her to access safely.
Librarians and volunteers have also become local mentors, helping students navigate forms, online applications, exam preparation material, and digital systems that many are encountering for the first time.
How villages made the libraries their own
Another defining feature of the initiative is its emphasis on community ownership.
Nivrutti Avhad made it clear from the beginning that no village would receive a library entirely for free. Every community had to contribute in some form, whether through renovation work, furniture, panchayat funding, or locally raised money.
The reasoning was simple. People value and protect spaces they help create.
Villages contributed funds, labour, and infrastructure to establish their own Digital Samvidhan Ghars, creating a model built on community ownership.
“When people build temples, they donate willingly,” Devendra says. “So why not libraries?”
Over time, the Samvidhan Ghars have evolved far beyond educational centres. Gram sabhas are now held inside them. Government programmes are screened on smart televisions.
Villagers gather there to discuss water shortages, roads, local issues, and employment opportunities. In many villages, these spaces have become civic and learning centres for the wider community.
“Calling them just libraries would be very reductionist,” Nivrutti Avhad says. “People are becoming aware here. They are getting exposure.”
Nivrutti Avhad remains deeply conscious of how fragile public initiatives can be in India. Officers are transferred. Governments change. Projects often disappear with the people leading them.
That is why much of the initiative has been designed around sustainability through local ownership. Each library has management systems, community participation structures, and partnerships intended to help the centres continue functioning long after administrative leadership changes.
“Public institutions become meaningful only when people use them, trust them, and feel ownership over them,” Nivrutti Avhad says. “Just as every village has a school, an anganwadi, and a hospital, every village should also have a digital library.”
Then he pauses before adding a personal hope.
“I hope it remains. It should outlast me. That is my aspiration.”
Every Digital Samvidhan Ghar is managed by a ‘Samvidhan Sakhi’, a local woman who oversees daily operations and helps make the centres safe and welcoming for girls and women.
In Dholpur, where abandoned buildings once symbolised absence and neglect, those same spaces are now filled with students studying under bright lights late into the evening.
Mohini Parmar still walks 500 metres every morning to reach her library. Dharmendra Singh still remembers the disbelief people expressed when he returned from Bengaluru. Across the district, villages that once felt disconnected from opportunity are becoming part of a shared learning network.
And somewhere in the Chambal ravines, where the state once struggled to reach, the lights now stay on long after sunset because children, women, and young aspirants are still inside studying, dreaming, and preparing for futures that finally feel within reach.
