One of the most important human rights in the modern
world currently is the right to education. Social, political and economic
systems have presently become so complex, codified and institutionalised that
persons without a modicum of formal education are seriously handicapped in
realising their life potential. This is especially true for populations that
have traditionally remained non-literate and non-numerate like the Bhil
Adivasis of Alirajpur district of Madhya Pradesh. They have now been integrated
into the modern system and are consequently greatly disadvantaged by the lack
of literacy and numeracy. Not only are they unable to organise their own
livelihood activities in accordance with the modern market and governance
systems but they also get cheated of their rights and entitlements in the
liberal democratic set up of which they are theoretically equal citizens.
The Right to Education (RTE) was enshrined as a
fundamental right in the Indian Constitution with the insertion of Article 21A
in 2002 by the Eightysixth Constitutional Amendment. Subsequently the Right of
Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act was passed in 2009 which among
other things made it mandatory for the State to ensure that all children
between the ages of six and fourteen were attending school in suitable
buildings well provided with teaching aids, play grounds and separate toilets
for boys and girls and adequately staffed by qualified teachers.
The State, however, has singularly failed to carry out
its responsibilities. Especially in Adivasi areas where in most cases there are
no school buildings, teaching aids and toilets and there are an inadequate
number of untrained teachers who are also poorly paid. The farce of State
provision of free education reaches its nadir in remote Adivasi areas in Madhya
Pradesh where the State provides only one teacher per village for ten months of
the year on a temporary "guest" basis, paid only Rupees Three
Thousand per month. Not surprisingly there are many villages in Adivasi areas
where there are vast numbers of children who are out of school in blatant
violation of the RTE Act.
The Dhas Gramin Vikas Kendra (DGVK) along with its
sister organisation Khedut Mazdoor Chetna Sangath has put continuous pressure
on the administration in Alirajpur district to improve the provision of
education to tribals. However, given the very low overall public outlays for primary
education there is a limit to what such pressure can achieve. That is why DGVK
has set up its own residential school in Kakrana village. But this one school
is not sufficient and so there are many villages still without schools. In the
villages of Bada Amba and Chilakda on the banks of the River Narmada the
Adivasi people are desperate that their children should go to school. They even
tried to contribute some money themselves and from time to time employed some
marginally educated youth to teach their children. But these efforts flagged
due to inconsistency as after some time the people would find it difficult to
pay the salary of the teacher on time due to their poverty.
A new initiative has now begun in these two villages.
An eighth class passed young man in Chilakda village, Nahar Singh, has been
appointed by DGVK to run a school there. Similarly another eighth class passed
young man, Dulji, from Khodamba village has been appointed to run a school in
Bada Amba village. There are currently about twenty boys and girls studying in
Bada Amba village and forty boys and girls in Chilakda village. Due to the
monsoon season two hamlets in Bada Amba village are cut off from the hamlet in
which the school is being run due to the intervening streams having waste deep
water which is too much for the children to wade across. However, the important
thing is that the schools have begun running regularly in these two villages
and gradually the number of children will increase. The picture below shows
Dulji teaching in Bada Amba village.
The name of the school is Motia Bhil Bhanai Ghar in
memory of the last Bhil King of the region who was dethroned by the Rajputs.
Bhanai Ghar is the Bhili equivalent of the word school. The teaching is in
Bhili as it is an established fact that children learn the fastest in the
mother tongue. The primer in Bhili has been developed by the DGVK in its school
in Kakrana and the teachers too have been given an initial training there. Once
the children become proficient in reading, writing and arithmetic Hindi and
English will be introduced. The schools are presently being run in the residences
of two of the villagers. They run for three hours from 9 a.m. to 12 noon. The
picture below shows Nahar Singh teaching in the school at Chilakda.
This is a small beginning no doubt and very inadequate
as compared to the quality of education that children in urban areas get but
for the people of these two villages it is like getting a piece of heaven in
their hands. Due to the remoteness of the area some of the parents had tried to
get their children to study in the residential school at Kakrana but even that
is very expensive for them. Thus, these schools in their villages open up an
important door for their children which they would not have been able to manage
on their own either from their own resources or by putting pressure on the State.
This small but worthy initiative has become possible due to a grant given by an Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur ( IIT KGP) Alumnus, Partha Dutta, who currently resides in Kentucky in the USA. We are both members of a Facebook Forum for IIT KGP alumni and also Facebook Friends and that is how we came in touch and ended up collaborating on this project. This is an example of how the new Internet based social media can lead to social action on the ground for ensuring social justice for those sections of the population who have lost out on human development due to no fault of their own. Earlier too, two IIT KGP alumni, Suresh Nair and Anjan Ghoshal, funded a project of the DGVK to try and get an Adivasi student graduate of the school in Kakrana into an IIT. Even though the student in question could not make it to an IIT he is now studying civil engineering in a private college with grant funding from Suresh Nair.
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