Primary Education Among Tribal People in Jharkhand - An Analysis

Abstract

Education is one of the most powerful instruments for driving development and social transformation. It is an activity and a continuous process that improves people’s immediate living conditions—social, economic, political, human, cultural, and environmental—and also enhances their potential for a better future. Education plays a vital role in providing tangible benefits by developing people’s skills, expanding livelihood opportunities, and increasing earning potential. As a result, it contributes significantly to reducing poverty. One of the major contributions of education is in skill formation and skill enhancement. Amartya Sen has strongly emphasized that faster development in India is possible only when primary education is strengthened. He believes that the vast state machinery can be made accountable only when people are educated enough to regularly assess and question it. In this context, education becomes a decisive factor in empowering citizens and promoting development. Despite recognizing that true development of under-privileged tribal communities is impossible without improving literacy and raising educational standards, the promotion of universal primary education among tribals has received limited attention from both the state and central governments.

Introduction

Despite numerous government schemes aimed at improving tribal education in Jharkhand—such as Ashram Schools, hostels, and special programs for Primitive Tribal Groups—their impact has been limited. Many initiatives failed because they ignored local cultural, geographical, and socio-economic realities, and were further undermined by poor implementation, corruption, and low political priority for tribal development.

Jharkhand has 32 tribal groups forming over 26% of the state’s population, yet more than 60% live below the poverty line. Literacy levels among tribals remain alarmingly low, especially among women and primitive tribes. While literacy among Scheduled Tribes improved between 1991 and 2001, it still lags behind national averages. Significant disparities exist across tribes, with Oraon, Kharia, and Munda performing relatively better, while groups such as Santhal, Ho, Lohra, and several primitive tribes show very low literacy rates.

Educational attainment drops sharply beyond the primary level, with very few tribal students reaching secondary or higher education. More than half of tribal children aged 5–14 are out of school, mainly due to poverty, child labor, household responsibilities, poor school infrastructure, teacher absenteeism, long distances to schools, and language barriers. Discrimination, cultural alienation, and non-tribal teachers unfamiliar with tribal languages further contribute to high dropout rates.

Although initiatives like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and recent enrollment drives recognize tribal children as a special focus group, their success has been mixed, largely due to inadequate infrastructure, lack of trained teachers, poor learning environments, and insufficient support for first-generation learners. Overall, the study highlights that tribal education in Jharkhand is constrained by structural, socio-economic, cultural, and psychological barriers, and requires context-sensitive, well-implemented, and inclusive educational policies to achieve meaningful progress.

Conclusion

There is immense need to understand the context, and background of education system in Jharkhand to address the question of providing equal access of education to tribals. Tribal communities in the state have been historically denied access to resources and opportunities. The present efforts of the government to bring these children into formal schools fail at two levels. Firstly, it is not able to enroll all tribal children and provide good quality functional schools. Secondly, even when tribal children are enrolled into schools, the education system besides doling out some incentives does not do much to improve the school environment to treat these first-generation learners with respect and dignity. Instead, tribal children are made to put up with an offensive and insulting climate that continuously discriminates and alienates. For such historically deprived communities, providing access to education is simply not enough, the government has to take a proactive role in creating overall conditions and opportunities that will facilitate their transition and breaking of the inter generational cycle of poverty and illiteracy. A sensitive cadre of teachers and bureaucracy is definitely required to make the difference. At another level, educational deprivation must be seen in the context of overall deprivation of the community and hence emphasis must be placed on improving the situation of tribal communities in general. Education is a critical input in human resource development and is essential for the country’s economic growth. Though the major indicators of socio-economic development such as, the growth rate of the economy, birth rate, death rate, infant mortality rate (IMR) and literacy rate, are all inter-connected, the literacy rate has been the major determinant of the rise or fall in the other indicators. There are enough evidences, which show that a high literacy rate, especially in the case of women, correlates with low birth rate, low infant mortality rate (IMR) and increase in the rate of life expectancy. The recognition of this fact has created awareness on the need to focus upon literacy and elementary education programmes, notsimply as amatter ofsocial justice butmore to foster economic growth, social well-being, and social stability. The State had set for it self the goal of achieving universal primary education by 2005 and achieving 85 percent literacy by 2010 which requiresfar reaching changesin policies and rules, tremendous efforts in community mobilization and continued innovations in teaching methodologies. The state promises, initiative and commitment need to be translated on ground, especially in the case of marginalized and tribal population. The paper shows that education of tribals has not received whole hearted support of the state and focused effort in this area is still awaited.

References

[1] Governmental indifference and lack of political will are largely responsible forthe callousstate of affairs. The unutilized amount for tribal welfare for the years 1998-2001 for all the states combined was Rs. 40546.46 lakhs. States with high proportion of ST population also had high amounts of unutilized funds with Bihar (Rs. 8113.26 lakhs), Jharkhand (Rs. 4742.62 lakhs), Madhya Pradesh (Rs. 4721.61 lakhs) and Gujarat (Rs. 3721.72 lakhs) topping the order. [2] Indigenous communities of India are commonly referred to as tribal or adivasi communities and are recognised as Scheduled Tribes under the Constitution of India. Although the Constitution does not define Scheduled Tribes assuch, it designatesthese communities asthose which are scheduled in accordance with Article 342 of the Constitution. According to Article 342 of the Constitution, the Scheduled Tribes are the tribes or tribal communities or part of or groups within these tribes and tribal communities which have been declared as such by the President through a public notification. The criteria followed for specification of a community, as scheduled tribe are indications of primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, shyness of contact with the community at large, and back wardness. [3] The tribal constitutes 26.3 per cent of total population of Jharkhand. Jharkhand has remained a home to a number of tribal communities. In some of the districts of Jharkhand, the tribal population predominates, the non tribal one. Jharkhand has a population of 26.9 million, consisting of 13.88 million males and 13.06 million females.The sex ratio is 941 females to 1000 males. The population consists of 26.3% tribals,11.8 % Scheduled Castes and 60 % others. The literacy rate in Jharkhand is only 54.13 % (2001) and female literacy rate is still lower at 39.38 %. [4] Female literacy is considered as significant indicator of educational development within any social group. Research studies have shown the importance of female literacy and education in uplifting the socio-economic parameters of a given society. In the context oftribal women in Jharkhand, illiteracy isso highly prevalent that their engagement with the mainstream society is seriously limited. [5] Jharkhand – Data Highlights: The Scheduled Tribes. Census of India. 2001. Source: Office of the Registrar General,India (web: [6] www.censusindia.gov.in/Tables_Published/SCST/dh_st_jharkhand.pdf) [7] The state (Jharkhand) has made remarkable progress in reducing the number of out-of –school children in the5-14 age groups by bringing them into the fold of education.The measures taken to promote education have resulted in the reduction of out-of-school children from 1.3 million in 2000 to .38 million in 2006 (Government of Jharkhand). [8] The idea is that this drive will focuse specially on children who have been out of school, who have reached the school-going age, and those who are going from the primary to middle levels and girls. [9] Vinoba Gautam. 2003. Education of tribal children in India and the issue of Medium of Instruction: A Janshala experience. [10] Compulsion to earn forces children to leave schools – Survey. September 10, 2007.Indo-Asian News Service. (Web: http://in.news.yahoo.com/070910/43/6kk3e.html ) [11] The post-metric scholarship Scheme provides financial assistance to all ST students for pursuance of post- metric studies in recognized institutions within India. The Scheme provides for 100% assistance from the Ministry to State Governments and UT Administrations implementing the Scheme, over and above their respective committed liabilities. [12] The Ministry under the Scheme provides funds to all the States and UTs having tribal population for establishment of residential schools for STs in an environment conducive to learning near their habitations on sharing basis (50:50) to States and 100% toUTs. [13] The Janshala Programme was a collaborative effort of the Government of India (GOI) and five UN agencies – UNDP, UNICEF, UNESCO, ILO and UNFPA – to provide programme support to the ongoing efforts towards achieving Universal Elementary Education (UEE).

Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Kumar Aditya Manohar, Dr. Depesh Kumar. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.