KOZHIKODE: The more things change, the more they stay the same! Laying bare the undercurrents of inequality that plague society, Perambra Government Welfare LP School continues to question the progress we have achieved in terms of social and economic empowerment. Labelled as a SC school for the past few years, only one student belonging to the Scheduled Caste Sambhava community took admission this year.
“The school currently has just seven students. Only one student joined grade one this year. We had collected the list of students from a nearby anganwadi and visited the homes of children taking admission to class one. But no one from other communities joined the school this year as well,” said M V Shymalatha, headmistress.
Established in 1956, the school started being painted in caste colours in the 1990s when children from the nearby Sambhava colony first enrolled. Not even a single non-SC student sought admission for more than a decade, till 2019, when some Muslim parents enrolled six of their children following the efforts of the Kerala School Teachers Movement (KSTM), affiliated to the Welfare Party of India.
After that batch of students moved on to other upper primary schools, Perambra Welfare LP made its descend back to infamy. None of the current government schemes have been effective in eradicating caste discrimination at the school, the KSTM has alleged. Members at a meeting said the Perambra grama panchayat and block resource centre’s ‘Samridham’ scheme aims at poverty alleviation but does not address deeply-entrenched issues.
“Providing food through the scheme is merely an insincere intervention. It is not just poverty or lack of food that students are faced with most. The key issue at play is the psychological and emotional torture through caste discrimination. To overcome such challenges, broad-based grassroots movement interventions are needed to create a mixed-learning environment. We have been making efforts to enrol non-SC students from 2017. But the school needs more effective intervention on the part of the general education department,” said Rasheed M, member, KSTM.
Intervention sought