Friday, October 20, 2006

A project to evaluate and develop the poor Tribals and Dalits of India

Tribals and Dalits together constitute 25% of India’s population. Most of them are poor and they mainly live in villages. For centuries they have been victims of stark exploitation and blatant oppression. After the advent of freedom, the Central and State Governments and many N.G.Os are taking yeomen efforts for their amelioration but failed to yield tangible results. The basic reason is that the majority of them are uneducated and trapped under several superstitions. As a result they are intellectually and morally not properly equipped to strive for their holistic development. Reservation benefits granted to these communities are monopolized by their own creamy layer, a nominal minority, and hardly permeate to grass-root level.



Our Work

School Hostels
• Aim
The main object of the hostels is to mould the children as efficient future village leaders, intellectually and morally equipped and properly motivated to go back to their villages after education and give effective leadership to their communities for their holistic development.
• Inmate children
Poor tribal and dalit children without educational facilities may be selected from the villages and accommodated in the hostels. In selecting children, priority would be given to orphans and semi-orphans
• Facilities provided in the hostels
The following are the main facilities provided in the hostels for the inmate children.
(a) Free boarding, lodging, educational help and recreational facilities (b) Help to pursue their academic studies in the neighboring schools (c) Special tuitions in academic studies wherever necessary (d) Appropriate moral education to create new visions, new goals in life, new commitments, new value system, new life style, community with a global outlook etc. all congenial for the holistic development of their communities.
(e) In addition to regular academic studies, impart proper training in various rural vocations like agriculture, village and cottage industries, teaching, health work, moral leadership etc. according to their aptitude and option.
• Structure of the hostel
One hostel will have two wings, one for the boys and the other for girls, each accommodating ten children. Each will be under the charge of one committed couple. As wardens they are to stay in the hostel with their families. They are also expected to work as social workers in the villages from where the inmate children are taken. As social workers they are to conscientise, organize and give moral leadership to these communities for their holistic development
• General administration
Each hostel will be a unit of the mission and ten hostels together will constitute a center. Once in a month all the wardens will gather together as a fellowship. This monthly fellowship is jointly responsible for the general administration. For every six months, the monthly fellowship will select two of their members to supervise the functioning of the hostels. Once in a month they are expected to visit each hostel to check their accounts and the functioning. As far as possible a meeting of the parents of the children may be held during their visits.
The wardens of hostels have to submit their monthly reports. After proper discussions, the supervisors are to consolidate the accounts and reports of all hostels and send them to the mission headquarters. In the monthly meeting the various problems of the hostels and inspection reports of the supervisors may also be discussed and necessary actions taken.
It is the duty of the monthly fellowship to see that all necessary information including photos of the children are furnished by the concerned wardens and transmitted to the headquarters for proper correspondence with the sponsors of children.
• Special school and college hostels
Special school hostels near well known central schools of high academic standard and college hostels near good colleges may be started for exceptionally brilliant, tribal and dalilt children. The purpose is to train them in the best way possible to get admission in the professional courses like Medicine, Engineering, Agriculture etc. and selection to IAS, IPS etc. in due course under the reservation quota. Some are to be trained as political leaders and veteran social workers. In due course, this will help to end the monopoly of the creamy layer and build an effective moral cadre of committed persons in the bureaucracy to properly harness the state resources ear-marked for the holistic development of tribals and dalits without any malpractice.
• Answer to a baseless criticism against schools hostels
A general criticism often levelled against school hostels is that by separating their children from their homes they are deprived of parental care and attention. But in the case of poor children this is not correct. On account of acute poverty, the poor parents construe their children as a burden and often engage them for child labour and baby sitting. The care and attention they get from their warden families are far better.
• Finance
The total expenses of an ordinary school hostel, including all the expenses of 20 children and payments to the two warden families will be Rs. 12,500/- p.m.(Rs1,50,000/- per year). This may be mobilized through sponsorship of children at the rate of Rs. 625/- p.m (Rs. 7,500/- per year) per child.
In the case of special school hostels and college hostels the expenses and rate of sponsorship will be 1½ times the rate of ordinary school hostels.
• Who will work out the mission
ADORE started their first school hostel in Jimidipetta village in Rayagada District in Orissa. Now, they have 37 hostels in Orissa accommodating 700 tribal and dalit children and 98 workers . They have also established rapport with more than 600 villages and organized nearly 200 weekly village fellowships for their holistic development through the Panchayat Raj Movement started by the Governments. In many villages they took successful non-violent efforts to remove untouchability and production and distribution of illicit liquor
ADORE is getting invitation from hundreds of tribal and dalit villages in various parts of Orissa to start hostel focused missions. Their present vision is to start 1000 ordinary school hostels and 50 college hostels in Orissa on the pattern mentioned above immediately. This is expected to cover most of the major tribal and dalit areas in the state. Hundreds of dedicated tribal and dalit social workers are available in Orissa to work as wardens. Hence human resources will not be a problem. In the villages with rural schools suitable buildings to house the hostels are also available on nominal rent.
• The Immediate Need
Therefore the immediate need is 20,000 sponsorship of school going children at the rate of Rs.625/- p.m (Rs.7500/-) per year and 1000 sponsorships of college going children at the rate of Rs. 1000/-p.m (Rs. 12,000/- per year)
• How you can help the mission
All brothers and sisters and organizations interested to help the poor tribals and dalits in India are requested to kindly sponsor one or more children or one or more hostels according to their capacity .




The Remedy

The only remedy to redeem these communities from the said predicament is to properly educate them in an effective way. As the intellect, character and culture of their elder generations are already formed, any radical changes in them are not easy. Hence, the main efforts for educating these communities are to be taken among their children. Starting of schools in all their areas in India is not practical. The best way to solve the problem is to start sufficient number of hostels for their children near the existing rural schools.