One of the major reasons of our continued socio-educational backwardness is persistently negligence to primary education. For, education still remains inaccessible to a vast section of our people belonging to the marginalised social groups.
Education is under the Concurrent List of the Constitution since 1976. It means both the Centre and State have equal responsibility to promote education. But unfortunately there has been lack of coordination and sharing of concern and resources among the concerned ministries and departments exclusively responsible for education of the children of the marginalised sections in a backward State such as Odisha.
There are schools and residential schools run by the State Government with support from MSJE, MoMA and MoTA of the Government of India. These ministries have framed a number of special schemes for the promotion of education among backward sections such as SCs, STs, manual scavengers, PVTGs, OBCs, minorities, EWSs and DNTs as a constitutional mandate to promote education and economic development. But various reports point at poor performances of Odisha in comparison to others in implementing various education related schemes for benefits of the vulnerable sections. The Central Government also in recent years has reduced the Central share especially in matters of scholarship to SCs and STs and children in pre -metric standard. Besides, the Government of India has put conditions for State share benefitting students of the marginalised sections. It has now become nobody's responsibility and the State and Centre are playing a blame game over sharing of resources and responsibilities.
A recent circular of June 2022 by the State Government shows that students under pre-metric stage from class VI to VII reading as day scholar will get a scholarship of Rs 180 per annum for boys and Rs 240 for girls. The students of class VIII will get Rs 240 ( boys) and Rs 300 (girls). The boarders of hostels will get Rs 950 per month for boys and Rs 1,000 for girls. In a detailed dietary expenses for each boy and girl, the scholarship amount of Rs 950 for boys and Rs 1,000 for girls is too inadequate. This paltry money gets divided into 14 items which includes breakfast , lunch and dinner, sanitary expenses, kitchen management, incentive towards SHG and pocket money.
The items for diet include 250 grams of rice, 40 gram dal, 135 gram vegetables, 20 gram oil, one egg, 150 gram fish/chicken per week, etc. As per the estimate, per day an average Rs 30 will be spent. This shows the lack of seriousness of the Governments towards education of the poorer section.
Odisha is the only State having a factory school for ST children in the capital city privately run with Government’s support and also there are hundreds of privately run schools in the State which are getting regular support for the education of the marginalised children. A very handful of children form SC and ST communities are supported under the Central and State schemes who read in Ekalavya schools and ANESWA where English medium education is offered.
But on the contrary, a vast majority of children still depends on the Government run schools and residential schools with extreme misery and without any future. As a result, still the dropout rate among SCs and STs is extremely higher in comparison to others. So also the quality of education in major residential schools has been a matter of concern. Every day, there have been reports about the vulnerable condition of the students in the schools and hostels.
In spite of funds and dedicated institutional arrangements, still there are hundreds of schools and residential schools without basic minimum infrastructure and qualified teaching staff. There are many schools with single teacher and without class room, electricity, drinking water, toilet and other amenities. Many teachers are lowly paid; their salary is even less than the Government declared minimum wage. They are under contractual provisions without job security. Under such conditions, nobody can expect them to work wholeheartedly. The illiterate masses and poor sections are largely unaware about the future of their children and the very education system in practice which is most discriminatory towards them.
Education is linked to modern day employment, quality of life and building democratic governances and inclusive societies. But it has been observed that the so-called civil societies, teachers associations, NGOs, political parties, who are mostly dominated by upper class do not worry about the education of the poor mass. While the upper class people are admitting their own children in privately run quality English medium schools, the marginalised sections have no options but to fall back on the vernacular schools where quality of education is a far cry.
Neglecting primary education means neglecting the basic foundation of a child on which his/her future depends. Though it has been advocated by many in the spirit of the constitution of India and Right to Education Act, still the ideas of constitution have not been materialised at the ground level.