The youngest of three sisters, 7-year-old Lovely Khatoon keeps quite busy from daybreak onwards. The daughter of a poor umbrella-repair man, Lovely goes to school meant for small children. On returning from school, she washes dishes in the neighbourhood till dusk returning home exhausted. Lovelys father earns a daily wage of forty rupees too small an amount to sustain a family of five. In a situation where just running the house is proving difficult, the question of educating the kids simply never arose. But there was a ray of hope.
The Primary Education Schools opened under the auspices of the National Child Literacy Programme (NCLP) in India, which has been launched through the Ministry of Education at the Central Government level, has helped reduce the familys worries immensely. Through this Scheme, besides free lunch, his daughter gets a scholarship of US $ 2 per month. These schools are proving to be a boon for those children, who were unable to acquire literacy due to reasons like poverty, backwardness and ignorance. Many of them are forced to pitch-in and help their parents eke out a living, despite their tender years.
In the Jamtada district of Jharkhand, child labour is widely prevalent. Small children are openly and profusely employed as casual and low-paid labour in the making of bidis, washing of dishes at hotels, at brick kilns and as rag pickers and sorters of plastic from garbage. In a massive drive to draw these children into the mainstream by educating them, around eleven of these Primary Education Centres are now operational in this area. Most of the children in this district, which shares a border with West Bengal, belong to the marginalised, illiterate and backward sections of society, being mostly migrant labourers and daily wage earners.
Jama Prakhand (an administrative unit) in Dumka region of Jamtada is considered one of the most illiterate and poorest regions in the country. In 1995, in an endeavour to educate these small children and stem the horrific practice of turning them back into child labourers once they became semi-literate, the Child Education Society was established here. Besides intellectuals, social activists and righteous-minded folks, people from all walks of life are members of this vibrant body. The Deputy Commissioners Office performs the role of acting like a local agency that facilitates and monitors the implementation of child welfare programmes at the district level, within Jamtada district in Jharkhand.
In order to run the schools, each district has an examiner who is paid a monthly salary of USD 50 to take charge. It is apparent that for the examiner, this is only a short-term task. For each project, two teachers who are each paid USD 30 per month are appointed. One such teacher, Renu Patra feels that if the government concentrates on running these schools well, it is possible to bring about a social revolution in the country. This, despite the fact, that convincing reluctant parents to enroll their young, was a very daunting task to begin with. The contention of parents was that time spent at school would amount to labour lost. On one hand, this would cause the family grave financial strain and on the other, children might become reluctant to return to a life of labour.
What probably turned the tide in their favour was that these schools, along with increasing their potential to earn and enriching their minds, also see to the childs physical well being. Within the auspices of the NCL programme, a resident doctor from a government run hospital regularly visits these schools and conducts a monthly check-up, imparting essential medical advice and medicines if need be. Despite all these benefits, many children are unable to attend school on a regular basis due to family and financial constraints.
Migrant labourers, who travel long distances to cities like Calcutta, Ranchi and Patna in search of seasonal work, usually take their children along, thereby causing breaks in their education. In spite of these difficulties, the number of parents and guardians who are regularly sending their wards to school and ensuring that the young benefit from monthly scholarships, health check-ups and free lunches provided at these schools is steadily on the rise.
These schools have brought a new dawn. Many of these children have now gone on to study further at government-run Secondary Schools. Parimal Mandal, the son of a landless labourer from Phagudi village, who studied at one such child labourers school in his village, is now in Class 7 at the Primary School. These schools have completely shattered the myth that only educated city mothers keep track of their childrens progress and can help them move forward. In fact, the majority of the members of the Parents Associations at these schools comprise of women. They visit the schools personally to assess whether they are being run properly or not on the basis of three separate enquiries.
Having overcome the many social constraints and lack of basic infrastructure, it may be said that Jamtada is a marvellous success story of its kind. And it looks like this small unknown village in the far-flung corners of Jharkhand has set an important precedence in providing basic education, by ensuring that literacy reaches the children that belong to the poorest sections of society, where it is most needed. Jamtada shows by example, that against all odds, literacy is a dream whose time has come.
Courtesy: Charkha, an Indian NGO
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