Educational equity for tribals

Addressing the persistent challenges in providing quality education to India's tribal populations necessitates tailored, inclusive approaches, governance reforms, and tribal-friendly policies that consider their unique geographical, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts

- KDP RAO

Ensuring quality education in tribal areas of India seems to be a continuous challenge. According to the MHRD's tentative figures, the dropout rate among ST students at the secondary level as of 2018 was 24.03 per cent, higher than the 18.64 per cent among SC students. The GER in Class 11 and 12 for 2015-16 was 59.4 per cent for ST students, compared to 71.4 per cent for SC students. Though Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes share a common and special identity as victims of social discrimination, geographical and cultural factors seem to variedly influence their relative advancement in the field of education.

The network of schools and colleges has been substantially expanded in most tribal areas across the nation over the years. In 2018-19, Samagra Shiksha was launched, subsuming the three erstwhile Centrally Sponsored Schemes-Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), and Teacher Education-envisaging 'school' as a continuum from pre-school, primary, upper primary, secondary, to senior secondary levels, with a view to ensuring universal access and retention.

However, the benefits of these schemes do not easily percolate down to tribal populations due to various factors such as inaccessible terrain, seclusion from mainstream society, cultural specificities, and stringent forest laws that restrict free movement of people and the creation of infrastructure in designated forests. The inadequate representation of tribals in public and private sector jobs and professions, as reflected in backlog vacancies, indicates that much is left to be desired in the educational advancement of tribal populations.