Tribal Policy: Pulling Back from the Brink?

The largest proportion of centrally sponsored programmes for tribal development are related to the single sector of education. This same sector tends to dominate budgetary allocations even in state governments. In states like Madhya Pradesh, tribal education is administered directly by the tribal welfare department and separate from the education department on the premise that the educational needs of tribal communities are at variance from the needs of the rest of the population.

The major strategies in various tribal states have been the establishment of hostels, scholarships, freeships, mid-day meals, free uniforms, books and stationery, remedial coaching and special coaching for competitive examinations, and vocational training (most successfully and innovatively in the field of computers). Under the major schemes of central assistance, ‘the scheme of girls hostel, which was started in the Third Plan, is a useful instrument for spreading education among Scheduled Tribe girls, whose literacy still stood at 18.19 per cent as per 1991 census against the general female literacy of 39.23 per cent’ (Government of India 1998-1999: 35). A similar scheme was introduced in 1989-1990 for construction of boys hostels. The Ashram School scheme was launched in 1990-1991 with the objective to extend educational facilities through residential schools for Scheduled Tribe students. A new scheme for Schedule Tribes Girls Low Literacy pockets was introduced in 1993-1994 and implemented through non-governmental organisations.

Districts having literacy rates for Scheduled Tribe women of less than 10 per cent as per 1991 census are covered. 136 Districts in 11 States of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal are covered under this scheme. The female literacy among certain primitive tribal groups is also very low. The scheme of educational complexes covers such primitive Tribal Groups also. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (Government of India) provides full assistance for setting up of the education complexes (Government of India 1998-1999: 35-36).

The strategy of special tribal hostels and residential schools makes eminent sense, because tribals reside traditionally in extremely small and dispersed settlements in difficult and remote areas. Therefore, the logistics of serving each of these settlements with day schools are unmanageable. The solution has been found in locating residential tribal schools and hostels even in the deep forest interiors, although quality and basic amenities remain a problem. The amounts paid as scholarship and stipends to tribal students, have enabled resource-strapped tribal families to invest in education, even though there is evidence that part of the money is diverted by some families for non-educational purposes.

Tribal hostels and residential schools in remote interiors are notoriously poorly managed, plagued by badly maintained buildings and leakages and delays in payments to students and purchases. Teachers, if they teach at all, are often poorly motivated and sometimes display prejudices against tribal children. The greatest failing has been in the context of education in tribal schools. The sensitive rhetoric of stated tribal policy of ‘integration’ and enabling tribal communities to develop according to their own genius’ is entirely forgotten, as mainstream school curricula are imposed wholesale on tribal schools. The problem is not merely the medium of instruction; again, contrary to stated national policy of enabling children at the primary level to study in their mother- tongue, there are almost no tribal schools in which teaching is in tribal languages. Even more serious is the cultural bias of school curricula, which tends to be urban, upper-caste Hindu in content. Studies have also established patriarchal and communal trends. Even the dedicated Ramakrishna Mission schools in remote regions of Bastar and Arunachal Pradesh, which have been actively promoted by the Indian State, provide high-quality education but of a kind that is exclusively and unapologetically Sankritised Hindu in terms of its cultural moorings, values and idioms. The Christian missionary schools in tribal regions country-wide have been equally aimed at assimilation, although into a different cultural ethos.²⁰

However, despite all these limitations, education is a growing and powerfully felt need of tribal communities. In the two-decade experience of this writer in tribal regions in the interiors of Madhya Pradesh, the most visible evolution in tribal aspirations even in remote tribal hinterlands and among so-called primitive tribes has been for education. The attraction is partly for eligibility for employment, particularly in government. However, the major impetus is to acquire skills to negotiate the complex, exploitative external world. The challenge remains of meeting these aspirations without alienating tribal communities from the roots that sustain them.

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