The Tamil Nadu school education department has instructed all Chief Education Officers to identify and take action on schools that make students wear wrist bands of various colours to identify their castes. The directive has been issued on complaints that the students are discriminating the student on basis of caste.
In a recent circular, based on a representation by a batch of 180 trainee IAS officers, the Director of School Education has said, “All the Chief Educational Officers are requested to take appropriate steps to identify such schools in their district, where such kind of discrimination is practised." It instructed them to issue suitable instructions to the head masters and prevent such practice immediately.
The circular stated that severe action on persons responsible for such discrimination and added that the regional officials should submit a report on action taken by them in this matter.
The issue came to light last year when a few physical education instructor and senior district level officials had allegedly discriminated students from participating in sports event. The student's caste was identified based on the colour of the wrist bands they were allegedly made to wear. In some schools, this band was also used to discriminate children from using common plates to eat the mid-day meals.
A representation lodged by the trainee IAS officers stated that some schools in Tamil Nadu, made students to wear colour coded wrist bands. These wristbands, which come in shades of red, yellow, green and saffron indicate whether they belong to a ‘lower caste’ or ‘upper caste’ in addition to this, rings and forehead tilak on the head were used as caste marker.
The batch of trainee officers also brought this up during a discussion in Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie earlier this year.