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Elementary Education for the Poorest and Other Deprived Groups: The Real Challenge of Universalization by Jyotsna Jha and Dhir Jhingran. Manohar, New Delhi. Pages 348. Rs 895. In one of the numerous boxes provided by the authors in the book, we find these trenchant nuggets: A teacher often sends his son in place of himself at Dhubri, Assam; a
maktab functions inside the government primary school at Araria, Bihar; the school (EGS) at Sidhi, Madhya Pradesh, functions for 1-2 hours whenever the high caste, politically connected Guruji decides to come; and the teacher beats lower caste children more savagely in a school at Shravasti, Utter Pradesh. This makes the intentions of the authors clear. They do not want to merely furnish a sophisticated statistical analysis to support the too well-known fact that the deprived and the poor form an overwhelming majority of the out-of-class children. Their aim is to understand the interplay of different life-situations, the crucial social, political, religious and economic contexts of every Indian kid that do not permit him to have his share of elementary education. For analysis, the book neatly picks up from 11 districts, the different urban and rural categories of children—the Dalit, the Muslim, the Tribal, the Slum, the OBCs. In the case of Dalit children, the social and political dynamics of their segregated localities play the role of a culprit. It is observed that the “location of a school is important not only to promote or prevent education, but also to ensure which community gets to vote, and apparently it is the use of schools as election booths which makes the issue of situating a school in a particular locality so crucial.” To some extent, the Dalits and even the Naxalite movements did help in creating pressures for the proper running of government schools. However, much more is still to be done to counter the effect of nefarious traditions. In contrast to it, the education policy makers have to ensure that while initiating the process of change, the cultural traditions of tribals must remain preserved. As far as the Muslims are concerned, they prefer the religious education in madrasas to the formal schooling. Boys can at least hope to become a hafiz, a
maulana or a munshi and girls can certainly learn how to bring up kids as good Muslims. Moreover, the madrasas do not have the rigidity of grading system and fixed curriculum time-frame. The attempts to modernise them have not been successful because of the cultural isolationism among the Muslims and the vested political interests. Largely, the children from the poor sections of rural India are deprived of the benefits of education because of their engagement in harvesting, sowing,
mahua, and tendu seasons. After this critical examination, the authors make many judicious suggestions to remove the bottlenecks at different strategic levels—parental commitment, school functioning, employment-generation, awareness-campaigns, teacher-motivation, NGO interventions. Overall, it is a thoroughly executed professional work. The survey-methodology, the formulation of new concepts and definitions (like the crucial distinction between the ineffective “desire” and the effective “demand” for education), the corroboration of discovered facts, the exposing of real life-situations, the use of unintrusive charts, tables, and boxes—all seem to have been painstakingly and neatly planned. However, I cannot help commenting that, whatever be the proffered logistic hurdles, the entire Himalayan belt as well as the major part of the North-East has been dismally ignored. There is no mention of Tripura, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram. These areas too present totally different and very rich tribal-contexts and crave for attention. I understand that the North-East is a tough sector, but Kinnaur, Lahaul, Spiti, and Kaza are comparatively approachable. Anyway, all these are very much a part of India and to the extent that these areas have been excluded, the present study remains incomplete. A child has a fundamental right to elementary education everywhere in India. |
