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Tribal children's education hits a jumbo roadblock by M Soundariya Preetha and MS Nileena

Human-animal conflict, difficult terrain come in their way

Until about two-and-a-half years ago, 10-year-old K. Nagaraj would go to Kovai Courtrallam every day, where he hawked fruits and snacks to tourists.

On one such day, officials of the National Child Labour Project found the lad selling titbits and whisked him away to the special centre for rehabilitating child workers at Karunya Nagar, about 30-km west of Coimbatore.

Nagaraj who was admitted to class VI has progressed to class VII. But, now the 12-year-old boy is unable to make it to the centre on all days of the week.

Like him, over 20 children of the Irula tribe study at this one-room special centre in classes III to VIII. After three years, they are helped to join regular schools.

Eight of them, including Nagaraj, come to the centre from Seengapathi, a tribal hamlet in Boluvampatti range of the Western Ghats. They need to walk three km to the Chadivayal check post and then take a bus for three km to Karunya Nagar. And, as elephants are spotted on the Seengapathi-Chadivayal Road often and, the children cannot go to school without escorts.

“We need to follow-up with the parents regularly. If the children do not come to the school even for two days, they tend to stay at home or head for Kovai Courtrallam to earn money,” says M. Mahalakshmi, the teacher at the special centre.

“Even we cannot reach these hamlets by private vehicles on all days as wild animals are spotted frequently,” adds K. Anandhi, who also works at the centre. Though there is a residential school run by the Tribal Welfare Department at Chadivayal, parents do not prefer to send their children there.

The Coimbatore District has 176 tribal habitations and 1,128 children from these villages study at the 15 residential schools in tribal areas, according to data with the Adi Dravidar and Tribal Welfare Department. Officials of the department say that a school is started in a tribal area when they identify around 40 students. Apart from these, one of the centres of Sarva Shiksha Abhyan (SSA) in the district is in a tribal area and is run in partnership with a NGO.

“Lack of awareness about education, frequent incidents of human-animal conflict and difficult forest terrain are the main hurdles in educating tribal children,” says Ashok Kumar, project director of Centre for Social Development and Research, the NGO that runs the SSA centre.

Officials from Tribal Welfare and Education departments and the SSA say they did not have any provision to map the tribal population and identify the number of children in the school going age. However, an official of the SSA says that the number of out-of-school tribal children in the district could be approximately 2 per cent.

Though awareness on education is gradually improving, the parents in most of the settlements are unable to afford to send their children to private schools. In many cases, poverty pushes the children to work.

Teachers should be paid more and given facilities to visit the parents at least once a week, interact with them, and encourage them to send the children to schools, says K. Sathiajothi, founder president of NERD Society, an NGO that works in tribal areas here.