elmati
Jhankar’s father died two years ago. Her mother barely manages to put
together Rs 20 on those days that she sand-fries puffed rice and travels
up to 15 km to distant villages to sell it. When her father died,
Belmati (then in Class III) dropped out of school and began tending the
neighbours’ goats. Last year, the head teacher convinced her mother to
send the child back to school. The mother agreed, persuaded in large
measure by the fact that with the free midday meal, free school uniform,
and the free textbooks, Belmati’s education would cost nothing at all.
And she would be ensuring a better future for her child. "Next
year, admissions will see girls outnumber boys in our school," says
Lily Behera, vice-president of the Village Education Committee (VEC) of
Kutrukhamar UPS (Upper Primary School). In 2006, the school, which
caters to six large villages, enrolled 16 girls. The ratio of girls to
boys is now 144: 153.
Chance plays no role in this tide of female
enrolment in schools in the Kutrukhamar panchayat of Bhawanipatna block
in Kalahandi district of Orissa. Kalahandi has a Scheduled Tribe and
Scheduled Caste population of 28.65 per cent and 17.67 per cent,
respectively. One of the country’s poorest districts, more than half
its population comprises agricultural labourers. Nearly a fourth of the
state’s population is tribal. But in some adivasi pockets of Orissa,
the initiative, and the incentives, to universalise elementary education
under the flagship of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme have begun to
show radical changes in the prevailing parental attitudes towards
educating children, particularly girls.
In Kutrukhamar UPS, Classes II
and VI have the highest number of girls — 26 and 30, respectively. All
over India, these two classes have the highest dropout rate for boys and
girls: they drop out from class II because they either cannot cope with
the learning and/or lose interest. The dropout rate in Class VI is high
because, first, girls attain puberty between 11-13 years of age and
social restrictions on physical mobility and gender interaction kick
into place; second, in economically disadvantaged households, after they
are 10 years old, girls begin contributing to the family income or take
care of siblings so that their mothers can go to work.
This dropout
pattern is changing. The education of adivasi girls was also hampered by
the sheer distance between schools and habitations, particularly when
roads wound through wooded, uninhabited and unsafe patches. That’s
changing, too. Aiming to provide a school within one kilometre of every
human habitation, Orissa now has 47,000 primary schools.
On the hilly
terrain of Kandhamal district of Orissa, a little school nestles amidst
natural greenery. Rugudipali village, little more than a hamlet, has
just 13 adivasi families: they now have a primary school next door. This
school started with 18 students — 14 girls and four boys.
This year,
three girls and a boy passed out of Rugudipali PS (Primary School) and
moved up to Suhagam UPS in Tutuluba village. Had this PS not been
established so close to the village, many of the older girls would still
be minding their younger siblings, fetching water, gathering firewood,
and learning to light cooking fires.
Lupuri Patra, 14, would be out
from sunrise to sunset herding goats. She also gathered dry twigs and
branches for a head-load of firewood. "Most of our children had
never even seen a book before," says Ramsingh Patra, her father,
who now minds the goats.
In Orissa’s tribal districts, accessing
interior habitations often means traversing rivers and hills. Tiny
hamlets are scattered kilometres apart. For such deprived communities,
the 19,000 schools under the Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS) — which
works in a non-formal teaching format — is a boon.
Community
involvement has become a leading feature of the EGS. By 2000, disquiet
among the 57 families of Bandhapada village — merely four km from
Kalahandi district headquarters in Bhawanipatna — had peaked: there
was no education facility for the village’s children. The families
petitioned for a school in the village. In 2001, a single teacher
primary school was sanctioned under the EGS. The villagers themselves
selected Tuna Swain, a local graduate, to be Education Volunteer.
In
February 2001, the first class of the Bandhapada EGS was held with 25
students under a banyan tree. For 75 days thereafter, that was where the
school remained. But enrolments increased. In 2004, when all four
classes were running to capacity, the school had 73 students. The
approaching monsoons made it imperative to have a school building.
Bamboo poles and wooden rafters came up. A 30 ft by 10 ft room took
shape. Mothers gathered cowdung and plastered them over the mud walls.
The harvesting over, sheaves of fresh straw lined the roof. A structure
this size would normally have cost Rs 7,000, but here not a single rupee
changed hands: the community contributed both material and labour.
After the building came up, the community’s sense of ownership over
education has grown exponentially. Now, if schoolchildren are caught
playing truant, mothers — not necessarily their own — frogmarch them
to the teacher. It was a proud moment in 2005 for all of Bandhapada
village when 20 of its children, promoted to Class V, were seen off to
the Purunapada UPS. This pride finds an echo today in many tribal
communities in Orissa. — WFS
