Earlier this years' Independence Day, i.e. 15th August, 2013, a tiger entered an ashram school during late night at 10:30 pm and persisted there till 11:30 pm making residents of the school, 59 students and 5 teachers dreaded to death for one hour. The school is situated inside Boar Wildlife Sanctuary, approximately 60 km form Nagpur. "It is a miracle that the tiger decided to go back. If it had decided to attack then the doors of the dormitory would not have stood any chance against its force" as said by school supervisor Rajhans Gavande. While it is obvious that the unprivileged ashram schools across the country will not get any tiger attack further as similar to this case, but the condition and compromise which these schools are facing is not appreciable. A similar case of ashram school's poor condition came into picture, when a petitioner Nashik (Maharashtra) resident, filed a PIL during last August or September of 2013 on condition of ashram schools. The reason was the death of above 793 children over the past decade due to minor reasons like snake bites, scorpion bites, fever and illness. The justice bench expressed a deep dissatisfaction in government's measures of tackling such deaths.
These incidents significantly clarifies that the tribal or ashram schools have been a victim of lack of consideration and care since decades by the government. Late but not the least, TDD (Tribal Development Department) has recently formed a special cell to develop the conditions of ashram school dormitories along with school facilities. There are some commitments made by the department to ensure a habitable and fruitful condition for students to pursue their education in ashram schools. Few of them are that from next month i.e. mid October, they would start recruiting a total of 1096 people for the post varying from a guard to the commissioner. The cell would put a lot pressure on officials and employees to ensure the reach of targeted proposal. The whole scheme is to build or enrich the proper infrastructure like lodging, boarding and availability of resources (food, study equipment, etc.) for a perfect environment building of education facility in ashram schools. The scheme also pledges to ensure a guard and a lady superintendent in the ashram hostels for a better security and safety of girl students. The TDD minister Madhukar Pichad quoted, "on one hand we are building hostels for the students, on the other hand we are also taking care of the safety issue very seriously. There have been many untoward incidents in the past and we are only trying to set things right for the betterment of tribal."
It is not only the problems that tribal are facing. Beside these they are still engraved with some serious issues like lack of development in tribal areas, lack of proper resources (not minerals) for development for society like infrastructure, proximity of commercial centres, etc. While a slow approach towards these grave issues by government doesn't seem to get any phenomenal success in near future for them, but an admirable step to renovate ashram schools to rectify tribal' future generations' condition is an appreciable alternative.
Tags:
Studies
School
Growth
Education In India
