For the politicians, cutting across party lines, the concept of Scheduled Areas and tenancy laws regulating tribals might be sacrosanct, but a serving IAS officer has come out with a book, dubbing them 'colossal error of British administration' holding back development, particularly educational improvement in Jharkhand.
K Ravi Kumar, a 2004 batch IAS officer and presently posted as Deputy Commissioner in Koderma district, in his book — Poor Students: Market-Oriented Education Reforms — says that educational underdevelopment in particular and economic development in general of the Scheduled Areas are due to the failure of political and economic institutions either imposed by colonial ruler to perpetuate their control over India or the choices of the leader of these areas taken during nation formation process.
He points out that Naxal and insurgency supporters, sympathizers, ideologists in the name of civil rights activists and human rights activists are projecting these failures as failures of the government, and trying to develop gap between common man in these regions and government.
Kumar, in order to prove his point that colonial policy of isolation and status quo created sub-human conditions in these areas, conducted a detailed survey in Santhal Parganas where he had earlier served as DC in districts of Sahibganj, Pakur, Deoghar and Godda. He is pursuing his doctorate at Gandhigram Rural Institute, Gandhigram, Tamil Nadu. The 327-page book divided into eight chapters, analyses educational disparity in India, reasons for the inequality in equity, quantity and quality of education on the basis of grassroots level experiences and field survey. The book introduces the concept of marketisation of education service to reform India's education system.
Devoting a chapter on how education eluded tribal areas, Kumar has concluded that the agrarian law not only primitivised the tribal and non-tribal communities, but also responsible for present day socio-economic status quo of the region.
"We are following the 19th and 20th centuries colonial extractive land institutions but we are promising tribal and depressed classes to achieve millennium development goals by 2015 in the market driven globalised era."
"The development politics in these tribal areas, including Santhal Parganas revolves around jal, jungle and jamin. However, this identity politics neither can ensure two square meals per day nor can ensure human development at par with the mainstream society," he says. Tracing history, he points out that Santhal Parganas was created through Act XXXVII of 1835, which removed the entire district from the operations of general regulations and acts of the government in force in the Presidency of Bengal and authorized the lieutenant Governor of Bengal to administer it. Subsequently, Santhal Paraganas Tenancy laws came into being which introduced prohibition of eviction of raiyats.
This provision not only applies to tribal land but also to all non-tribal land. Discussing the implication of colonial policy on education, he points out that Santhal Parganas, which has more population than Himachal Pradesh, does not have a single engineering or medical or engineering college. "The Jharkhand Government recently constructed one engineering college at Dumka and signed an MoU with a private agency for the management. The private agency applied to AICTE for approval of course in academic year 2013-14, but AICTE did not give approval on the ground of meeting the input eligibility criteria. Sido -Kanhu University, set up in 1992 is still running in a rented building."
He also blames the continuing colonial administration for the poor show in the field of primary education. "The colonial administration through land survey and settlement operation and off-late non-transferability of raiyat land in the area, has kept the size of village small and unviable for school in every village. This non-transferability of land and hereditary village headman system became hindrance for growth of small village into big ones either through migration of people from small villages to larger villages or integration of various tribes and growth of urban centres in these areas."
"The isolation policy through land institutions adopted since colonial time also kept the service providers like teachers, medical staff and traders away from their place of work."
"We do not have land for educational infrastructure as SPT Act does not allow the transfer of land even for public purposes like educational institutions, medical facilities, skill development and urbanization to market their agriculture produce. The private school management purchases tribal land through unregistered gif deed, which has no evidential or legal value and it is illegal as per tenancy law."
He has strongly advocated that tenancy law should be tailored for limited purpose transfer of tribal land through well-regulated market forces for public good including urbanization. The government waste land and non-tribal land should have free hold tenancy, he adds.
He has argued about marketisation of delivery of public education service under which the Government should have the responsibility to ensure equity and quality of education for all, especially poor. There should be no double quality standards in elementary education.
However, he says that higher education service should not be treated as public good but competitive players should deliver higher education services at affordable cost and the State should create equal opportunity for all students to get higher education.