Introduction :-

Education is one of the primary agents of transformation towards development. It is an activity, or a series of activities, or a process which may either improve the immediate living conditions or increase the potential for future living. It may play an important role in bringing tangible benefits by developing the skills of the people. It may expand livelihood opportunities and increase earning potential and thus help in tackling the problem of poverty at large. The major role that education has been able to play is with regard to knowledge inculcation and skill-improvement of the persons. Amartya Sen's argument for faster development of India has been to repeatedly stress the criticality of Primary Education, if it purports to serve and is to be assessed regularly by the people themselves is by educating the people.

The situational analysis clearly demonstrates the extent of the problem of low literacy rates and lack of education among tribal children in Jharkhand. The average literacy rate of Jharkhand state is 54.13 percent, but among tribal, particularly among the female,literacy rate is as low as 10 percent  . Although the overall literacy rate among the STs has increased from 27.5 percent (1991 census) to 40.7 percent (2001 census) but despite this improvement, the literacy rate among the tribes is much below in comparison to that of all STs at the national level (47.1 percent). In Jharkhand, over all literacy rates among the STs, male and female (54 percent and 27.2 percent) are also considerably lower than those at the national level (59.2 percent & 34.8 percent). Literacy is one of the most basic parameters for the success of democratic system of governance. But in Jharkhand, education statistics depicts a very poor situation, particularly in terms of providing primary education to tribals. Literacy rate among the tribal population (38.10 percent) is less than the literacy of the general (54.13 percent) population in Jharkhand. The 2001 census shows that among the five numerically larger tribes, Bhumij, Ho, Lohra, Santhal and
Kharwar have over all literacy rates lower than that of the national average. Oraon and Kharia have done better and more than half of the population in the age of seven years and above are literates while Munda have the literacy rate almost equal to that of all STs at the national level.

Issues and Challenges :-

Some of the obstacles in achieving universal primary education in tribal areas are lack of physical infrastructure, functional deficiency, poor socio-economic conditions and gender discrimination. Inadequate educational infrastructure and services, lack of resources (in terms of material and manpower), shortage of teachers and schools further aggravates the situation. Some remote areas either have no schools at all or if the schools do exist then poor roads and lack of transportation make them inaccessible. Schools are being run in inadequate infrastructural facilities. Either they are being run from dilapidated structures or at some places there is no structure for children and they even lack basic amenities such as blackboard, chalk, chairs, desks, clean drinking water and toilets.

Based on survey in 22 rural districts in Jharkhand, Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) shows that there are still 8.6 percent of schools (class I -VIII) without wate provision, and an additional 9.4 percent with water provision but no water available. In many schools, physical resources and infrastructure such as school building, toilet, and boundary wall are in poor condition or not constructed. Multi-grade classes are a common feature due to lack of classrooms. This number ranges from close to 70 percent in states like Bihar and Jharkhand to as low as 3% in Kerala (ASER 2007) .

•  Physical Infrastructure at Schools :- Acute shortage of trained and qualified teachers, high absenteeism among teachers further worsens the situation. Particularly the high student-teacher ratio, with 7% of schools having a ratio equal or greater than 100 student per teacher (compared to the All-India average of 5%)8 is serious matter of concern. This is largely due to an inability to recruit the required number of teachers for approximately 40,000 schools in Jharkhand. Even in light of the serious teacher shortage, the teachers are often pulled away for nonteaching duties such as election duties, supervision of Mid-day meal, construction of schools facilities, etc.
• Teacher-Student Ratios and Attendance :- Ignorance and lackadaisical attitude towards education of parents is another important challenge. Poor socio-economic conditions is a major constraint to educational access, impossible for marginalised households to make investment in education in the form of school fees, costs of books, uniforms, meals and transportation. Children from poor families contribute to family income either directly by working as labour or indirectly by contributing in doing household chores. Another challenge in addressing and providing primary education to tribals is geographical location. Most of the primitive tribes still live in hills, dense forest with difficult terrain and many a times, it is difficult to reach them because of lack of road and transport facilities. It is a challenge to provide education to tribals and setting up school and institutions in small, scattered and remote tribal habitations. The majority of the tribes live in sparsely populated habitations in the interior and in inaccessible hilly and forest areas. At the time of creation of Jharkhand, there were about 12,000 revenue villages/inhabited tolas that did not have a primary school within 1 kilometer radius. Under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan/Gram Shiksha Abhiyan, nearly 11,500 alternate schools have been opened since August 2002 but now there is a need for qualitative improvement, in terms of infrastructure, staff allocation, provision of books and other facilities. High school drop-out rate among tribals is another reason for
  their lagging behind in education .Many schools enrolling tribal population are plagued by high drop-out rates. The survey conducted by different agencies and compiled by the Jharkhand Education Project Council (JEPC), carried out among 25,703 school drop-outs in the age group of 6 to 14 years, reports that compulsion to earn a livelihood forces hundreds of students to leave.

Suggestions :- 

Considering the low literacy among tribals and high drop-out rates at elementary and higher levels, there is need of special focus on tribal's education, inclusive of context-specific traditional and innovative interventions. To enable comprehension of lessons taught, tribal children should be taught in their mother tongue at least in the Classes I to III. A normative network of primary, secondary and high schools equipped with proper school buildings, hostels and other requisite infrastructure facilities should be worked out for all schools in tribal areas. The norms should be minimum one functional residential high school for ST boys and one residential high school for ST girls in each block in the tribal areas, and at least one primary school and one primary level girls' hostel in every Gram Panchayat.

To prevent teachers' absenteeism in tribal areas, local and tribal teachers from local Panchayats should be given preference in employment, and the teaching and non-teaching staff of primary schools should be placed under the control of the village management committee or village education committee appointed by the Gram Sabha or Gram Panchayat. Finally, to make a substantial inroad towards attaining the goal of universal primary education, it is imperative that all interventions should have community participation as a core strategy. In order to ensure universal education and sustainable improvement in the quality of education it is necessary to bring the community closer to the school system.

Conclusions:-

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 of 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 intergenerational 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, not simply as a matter of social justice but more to foster economic growth, social well-being, and social stability. The State had set for itself the goal of achieving universal primary education by 2005 and achieving 85 percent literacy by 2010 which requires far reaching changes in policies and rules, tremendous efforts in community mobilization and continued innovations 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.