Hyderabad, Nov. 21 -- "I want my children to study, unlike me. I don't want them to suffer like I do, toiling every day at construction sites for meagre wages," said 35-year-old Lakshmi (name changed), a single mother and construction labourer from Giri Prasad Nagar slum.

She is one of thousands of parents demanding a school closer to home, from pre-school to Intermediate. The slum is a part of a 100-slum cluster falling under the Jawahar Nagar Municipal Corporation (JMC), Kapra Mandal, Medchal Malkajgiri district, situated in the north-east outskirts of Hyderabad.

Sitting less than 15 kilometres away from the prestigious BITS Pilani Hyderabad campus, the region is infamous for holding the city's largest solid waste management facility,...