The provision in the Right to Education (RTE) Act that a child should be able to access a school within a kilometre’s walk is seen by many as the most revolutionary part of the Act. But the challenge is to transfer the radical fervour seen on paper to reality.
This reporter went down to the Attappady tribal area of Palakkad district in Kerala, the most educationally-backward region in a state that has the highest literacy rate in the country, looking for signs of transformation.
What I came across instead was a land that was deprived of even the most basic facilities.
The shocking reality was that in the block covering nearly 725 sq km, spread over three panchayats of Puthur, Sholayur and Agali, there was only one primary school in almost five to 11 km.
In some cases, children had to travel nearly 35 km to reach their schools. Add to this lack of transportation facilities which forces even students studying in schools in Attappady to live in hostels. But limited hostel facilities compel many students to leave for distant places like Wayanad, Thrissur and Kozhikode to continue studying.
“The fact is, students living within six to 12 km are refused admission
because they come from nearby places. Only those living at least 20 km away from the school would get admission,” said Ramu KA of Thampu, an organisation working in the neglected field of Adivasi education.
The ground reality in Vellamadi, one of the 185 oorus or villages of Attappady, will illustrate the point. The tiny ooru has about 108 students who study in various schools outside Attappady.
“Children are separated from their families from the age of six to pursue formal education in hostels,” said VS Murugan, another activist associated with Thampu. Ramu added that in most cases government schools in the area are not well-run.
Teachers are absent frequently and the school infrastructure is pathetic. There is no toilet or proper drinking water to speak of.
Private NGOs and institutions get funds to run residential schools for tribal children. Their middlemen influence families to send their children to hostels, he added. Both Murugan and Ramu belong to the Adivasi community and had to face similar ordeals during their childhood.
Though there are many primary schools in Attappady, the number of high schools is very low. As a result, many children have to discontinue studies after primary schooling.
Most students in Attappady quit school at the age of 12 or 13, Murugan said. The lack of high schools in the area is one of the reasons for the alarming number of children who go away to residential schools from the age of six.
“These residential schools are located far away and parents don’t get to see their children much. When the child has a problem in the residential school, the parents are not informed on time. In fact, when one child died, the parents were told of the tragedy long after the incident took place,” Ramu said.
Residential schools too are in a deplorable state. The conditions are unhygenic and in most of them, more than 30 children share one room. For most Adivasi students, college education remains a distant dream. The case of a girl from Vellamadi ooru who got admitted to a BSc Nursing course is a typical example. She is on the verge of discontinuing the course because banks are not ready to provide education loans to Adivasis.
Inaccessibility of education is an important area of concern for Child Rights and You (CRY), an NGO working in 35 villages or oorus in Attapady and nearabouts.
“Children have to walk two to 25 km to reach their schools,” said CRY Deputy General Manager, Vidya Raman. It is no different with children in anganwadis. Since anganwadis are provided for clusters of oorus, for children of some oorus the nearest anganwadi is at least two km away.
Distance also keeps the teachers away from anganwadis. Some of these anganwadis are run in makeshift buildings that are very unsafe.
“The problem is, most of the parents depend on the National Rural Employment Guarantee (NREG) scheme for their livelihood. They have to report for work at 9 am, the time when children are to be sent to anganwadis. So, many parents are unable to send their children to anganwadis regularly,” Shivali, a social worker from theAdivasi community, said.
When the parents are absent, the older girls are forced to stay at home and take care of the younger siblings, Shivali added.
Then, there is the language barrier. “If the teachers are from non-Adivasi communities, language becomes a problem. Teachers don’t speak the tribal dialect and the children cannot understand Malayalam. It took me four years to understand what was being taught,” Ramu remembered.
Karunakaran, an Adivasi youth from Kuttappedi ooru, said that alcoholism is another issue plaguing the area. Many are single parent families, with only the mother to look after the children. In some cases, the single mothers are alcoholics and children are often not cared for.
Ill health compounds the problem. “People of many nearby oorus suffer from serious skin diseases which causes deformities in their children,” Karunakaran said. According to CRY’s Vidya, the only way out was to expand the scope of the RTE Act is to include children in the age group of zero-six and 15-18 in the core provisions.
“The Act should ensure access to an equitable quality of education for all children up to the age of 18 with qualified teachers and all basic facilities, within one kilometre of all habitations. The Central Government should allot at least 10 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product to the country’s education sector,” Vidya said.
Unless education gets financial backing by the state, poverty is not likely to change. No country in the world can achieve universal education without the state funding the schools, she said. For 400 million children, the government’s spending on education has
actually reduced. From 3.84 per cent of the Union budget in the year 2008-2009, it has now dropped to 3.03 per cent.
Even today, 65 per cent of girl children are dropping out of school due to inaccessibility of schools and lack of basic facilities.
In India, only 53 per cent of habitations have a primary school and only 20 percent of habitations have a secondary school. “Our experience indicates that these factors lead to the proliferation of evils like child labour,” Vidya concluded.
— sabloothomas@expressbuzz.com
Attapady and its tribes
Attappady, one of the prominent forest regions of Kerala is situated in the northeastern part of the Palakkad district. The 765 sq km area is bound on the east by Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore district, on the north by the Nilgiris, on the south by the Palakkad Taluk and on the west by the Karimba, Pottassery and Mannarghat revenue villages of Mannarghat Taluk of the Palakkad district and Ernad Taluk of Malappuram district.
In India, an integrated programme of intensive development of tribal areas was introduced in 1957 and 43 Tribal Development Blocks were opened in various states which had heavy concentrations of Scheduled Tribes. The criterion adopted for opening a Tribal Development Block was that the block should have a minimum area of 200 sq miles and a population of about 25,000 and that more than 66 per cent of the population should be tribals. Since Attappady satisfied the requirements, a Tribal Development Block was started there from April, 1962. The area is inhabited by three tribes namely, Kurumba, Irrulla and Muthuga.
