Education For All

AID - Jharkhand (Palamau Chapter )

 

Education is a basic human right. Information is the key to success. Due to lack of education the poor remain impoverished and illiterate. The pathetic situation is that of a number of government schools languishing behind without any basic infrastructure facilities and no atmosphere conducive to learning the basics. Education is the direct responsibility of the government, its focus on this theme being to enable the community to utilise the available
government resources to the fullest extent. The non-functioning schools need to be activated and made functional.

The community and the children themselves are geared up to ensure that the schools function regularly so that the children can enroll in the them rather than working as child laborers.

Several rallies, padayatras and discussion forums have been initiated on this front. Children, parents and volunteers from the villages have even walked a 70-Km stretch to bring to the notice of the authorities the plight the children undergo due to the lack of schools. This campaign will go on to ensure that the basic right to education is fulfilled in the region.

Palamau district in Bihar is known as "Somalia of India". The area is besieged with multi faceted socio-economic problems. Tribals and ex-untouchable community form the larger part of the population in the region. Around 15% of the population are rich landlords and are virtually ruling the majority of the population in the region. Feudalism persists inspite of the abolition of the Zamindari system. The indigenous and the ex-untouchable communities work as bonded
labourers for the landlords. As the region is drought prone, migration is also very high in these regions

The survival and basic sustenance of the family takes the prime slot and hence children are deprived of basic education. Furthermore, the government schools in the region are totally defunct, hence there is no means for the children to get access to basic education.

Lack of schools on one end and poverty on the other end forces children in the region to resort to work at the very early age of  5-6. The children are engaged in turns for picking up forest produce, agricultural labour, household work, and grazing animals. They also migrate and work along with their parents.

The community is in the strong grip of the problems of debt bondage, child marriage, child labour, the purdah system (women in veil) and feudalism. The fallout of feudalism in the region has been the rise of extremism.

With all these complex issues in the region, children's education never took any importance at all and it was never a felt need.

Alternative For India Development, working in the region for the last decade, has enabled the setting up of community forums to fight social issues in the region. It has also actively worked for drought relief in the region. Keeping in view the needs of the present generation, it has now envisaged elaborate plans to bring Palamau region on the educational map. This is also one of the important measure to contain child labour in the region.

The educational scenario in Palamau district of Jharkhand is beginning to take a new leaf. AID started its initiatives to bring all eligible children into the educational fold.

To strike at the issue of the child labour in the region, both formal and non-formal educational streams have been established in the region. In very remote areas where there is no access to any forms of education, AID have set up formal schools in 11 villages. Along with the formal schools, pre-schools for the toddlers in the region have been initiated for the first time. In 40 villages, where the incidence of child labour is very high and their participation in formal education stream has been redundant, non-formal educational centres in timings convenient to the children have been
initiated. Supplementary education in government schools is being run in 20 schools.

These initiatives have brought about the felt need for education in the region. Around 5500 children are directly benefiting through these educational efforts.