In a disturbing disclosure, the State Right to Education (RTE) forum has claimed that its survey reveals 4.34 percent children face social and caste discrimination in the schools. The survey further claimed that 3.80 percent students revealed that they faced discrimination during meals in the schools.
The forum claims that the caste discrimination is rampant in Uttarakhand and a large number of the students were disinclined to come forward in the survey due to deep-rooted stigma of being on the lower rung of the social ladder.
The forum is conducting stock taking of implementation of universal RTE in the State in the last four years. In this year the survey for stock taking was done in 11 districts and it covered 184 schools in the State.
The convener of the State RTE forum, Raghu Tiwari, told The Pioneer that the problem of caste discrimination is still common in the rural Uttarakhand and the silence of a large number of students belonging to the lower strata of society on the issue should be taken note of.
He said that the incidence of separate cooks for upper castes and lower castes are common in the schools of the State. "I have even come across a situation where the plates of children are marked so that they do not get mixed,'' he said.
Tiwari added that the problem needs to be viewed very seriously as caste discrimination violates the right to equality guaranteed by the Constitution. He said that the education department first of all should sensitize teachers on the issue.
The survey also paints out a dismal picture of the Mid Day Meal (MDM) scheme which is served in the Government schools. It claims that only 48.36 percent schools have a separate room to prepare the meals in Uttarakhand while in 35.86 percent cases the meal is either cooked in temporary shelter or is prepared in the open.
When contacted, the Joint Director (JD) of MDM, P K Bisht brushed aside the charge of discrimination during preparation and serving of meals in the schools. He said that the department had received only one complaint three years ago about caste discrimination in one school of Chamoli district and the problem was sorted out. Bisht also said that 92 percent schools of the State now have separate kitchen to cook. He said that the findings of the survey are not reliable as it was conducted only in a handful of schools.