The same old story

I was in Bajna in Ratlam district in the western corner of Madhya Pradesh day before yesterday among a group of young adivasi men and women charged with the responsibility of improving the education and health status of the children in their villages. I had been invited by the NGO that had employed them for this work to train them to do it better. The common refrain was that the people were not at all interested in getting their children to be educated and healthy. I felt a sense of deja vu. I had started off my career as an activist in Jhabua all of twenty two years ago trying to teach adivasi children and had come up against the same reluctance on the part of their parents to put in some time to see that their wards did indeed study. It is impossible to ensure that adivasi children will learn anything in a day school system if they do not have some pressure on them from home. However, the parents being illiterate are themselves not very impressed by the arguments that we peddle about the advantages of being educated. Thus even today the mobilisation of parents for the education of their children still remains a problem. My friends and erstwhile colleagues in Jhabua, Amit and his wife Jayashree, who currently run a residential school for adivasi children in Sendhwa in Barwani district too lament that the parents of the children are not motivated enough to exercise themselves over the studies of the children and expect the teachers to take all the responsibility. In a residential setting there can still be some pressure on the students but in a day setting it is very difficult. So now I have been given the responsibility of devising some programme for the mobilisation of illiterate adivasi adults in Bajna to give time to the education of their children. A tall task indeed. Especially as i am sceptical of the school system itself and am struggling with the education of my own son. I would have liked to take him out of school altogether but my wife demurs saying that he will become unsocial. I will have to draw something from my experience of spending four hours a day with my son to inspire the adivasi parents in Bajna also to do something for their children.