JAIPUR: To revitalize its base among the tribal communities of Rajasthan, the Gehlot government has taken a major initiative to turn the dreams of talented tribal students into concrete reality. To help ST children who often struggle due to poverty and lack of facilities, the Rajasthan government plans to provide free coaching to 100 tribal students for the preparation of medical and engineering entrance examinations.
The Tribal Welfare Department has decided that in its first phase, the Allen Career Institute, a major Coaching success from the hub of Coaching in Kota, will provide coaching to 100 non-resident students which will start from April this year. Under the scheme, students of the tribal class studying in government schools will be selected for coaching.
Minister of Tribal Development Department, Arjun Singh Bamnia said - "there is no dearth of talent among the tribal students but they do not get proper guidance. Due to this, these students fall behind. Tribal Development Department has laid down the procedure for the selection of talented students. Under this, an examination will be conducted first. Students will be selected for coaching on the basis of marks obtained in the examination. This coaching will be given in Udaipur and Kota".
In this joint initiative between Tribal Regional Development Department and Allen Career Institute, the students will be selected in the order of preference, in which free coaching to 50 students in class 11 and 50 in class 12 in second year in the academic session 2020-21 will be given. All the facilities will be provided by the department. Trained faculty will be sent by the coaching institute to conduct the batch in Udaipur so that they can prepare the students for engineering and medical entrance examinations in a better way.
Naveen Maheshwari, director of Allen, says, " the Institute has always been recognized for its participation in social concern. The students of the institute have topped All India 9 times in engineering and medical entrance examinations so far."
Political experts believe that tribal areas of southern Rajasthan were traditionally Congress's strong centres, especially, Banswara, Dungarpur and Udaipur. Senior journalist, Nitesh Garg, working in tribal areas says that Congress's insecurity has grown which is why the party now wants to target the youth of tribal regions. "In the Southern Rajasthan's tribal areas , Congress has been the biggest loser of late after the Gujarat based BTP (Bhartiya tribal party ) has become active. They have two MLAs in Dungarpur. Tribals feel that the Congress and BJP are not serious about their issues and now have faith in BTP. Congress was earlier affected by BJP and now by BPT. CM Gehlot is constantly touring these areas."
Over the last decade RSS' ' vanvasi kalyan parishad' has been very active in tribal areas as well which has also impacted Congress's grip on the region. The party now feels that with the increasing awareness about education, the youth is also attracted to these entrance exams and wants to capture the hold back.
Nitesh though is uncertain about the success of the scheme. He says, " Tribal youths are more focused on entrance exams related to accounting, teaching and nursing which gives them an option of a stable government job. Medical and engineering don't attract them as much and also these are very competitive exams as well."