Educating Tribal Communities

Lack of education and awareness among the communities in the backward regions and in remote localities of the nation has been pushing them towards impoverished life. They are engulfed with superstitions and different socio-religious taboos; have poor awareness about cleanliness, limited or almost zero sanitation facilitie, suffer from poor health due to unhealthy and primitive life styles and demonstrate strong apathy towards any attempt of modernization. Saikat Kumar Basu,  AB Canada emphasizes on delivering scientific and socio-cultural awareness among these communities through various interactive platforms (IP).

In delivering educational awareness among tribal communities via modern science communication regarding sanitation, cleanliness and healthy life styles, emphasis has to be placed on their traditional beliefs, faiths, religions and local issues/problems first, and integrating them to the ideas of modernization. Besides using local languages for better communication and generating interest on scientific awareness about good health and sanitation, it will be important to slowly inculcate their interest in modern science and technological developments through positive and multi-prong Interactive Platforms (IP). Apart fromusing IP to engage primarily school children, special emphasis must be laid in targeting the education and awareness of the women folk since they constitute the main platform on which the rural societies are fundamentally established. The approach has to help the community members in establishing their faith on modernization, healthy life styles, sanitation and cleanliness and then to facilitate logical and rational thinking.

The WTO has identified India as the nation with least toilet to population ratio. Only 69 % elementary schools have girl’s toilets. The Indian government has pledged to build toilets for over 600 million people by 2019 and to fulfil this, Clean India Mission has been launched. However, it seems to be restricted predominantly to the urban centers. The rural areas are grossly neglected and one can well imagine what could be the situation in the remote and rural backward regions.

One of the biggest loopholes in the security of the rural poor, especially of women, is the absence of toilet facilities within the residences. Just by increasing residential toilet facilities, the security of the rural poor women across the nation could be increased several folds. On top of this, open air defecation has serious environmental consequences. It is necessary that the Clean India Mission (CIM) must work in close coordination with a Safe India Mission (SIM) to establish in house (interior /internal/closed) toilet and latrine facilities in the entire rural sector of the nation with priority to promote better health, cleanliness and sanitation in one hand and ensure safety and security of rural women on the other. In addition, initiatives must be taken to educate and empower the rural women.

The challenges of sanitation and hygiene education among backward communities and in remote localities are as follows:

1. Lack of education and awareness.
2. Lack of primary, secondary and higher secondary schools, vocational training institutes and colleges in the locality.
3. Poor economic development and annual income of local residents.
4. Lack of interest and enthusiasm among parents to send their kids to schools even when these facilities are available thereby cutting them off from the opportunities of modern education.
5. Many families have their kids as the first generation school goers and hence they have considerable challenges in continuing their education and adopting to modern life styles different from their age old traditional ways.
6. Traditional negative faiths and local customs in preventing kids from going to school. Girl children are worse effected preventing them from getting exposure to school education.
7. Lack of understanding about their basic rights and privileges provided by the government and local administration.
8. Lack of development and progress in backward areas and remote locations due to poor infrastructure, connectivity and communication network.
9. Lack of modern health units and facilities thereby forcing people to depend on quacks and local, indigenous medicines.
10. Religious and caste feuds fragmenting society along sectarian lines along with inter- and intra- religious conflicts and misunderstanding among different communities, tribes clans and groups. These have indirect impacts in damaging their faiths or belief on any scientific and rational explanations.
11. Overall, poor education and awareness compounded with poor economic development are pushing the backward communities and people living in remote rural localities
    further away from modern education, scientific and sociocultural awareness, vocational training and better employment or job opportunities.

How can interactive awareness programs play important role in helping/promoting education on sanitation and cleanliness in the backward rural and remote communities? One of the best possible way to effectively reaching out to such communities for promoting education and awareness is through IP. The proposed approaches for using such an interactive platform are described below:

1. It could kindle interest about education and healthy life styles through awareness classes and workshops that may include students telling stories, building simple science models related to sanitation and health, trying to provide logical and scientific explanations based on problems related to their immediate life issues, societies and localities.
2. Use of vernacular languages and even local dialects in the classroom environment will greatly help in breaking the ice between the teacher/instructor and the students.
3. Use of different colored chalks, crayons, pastels, water colors, pencils, markers, marble papers in the class rooms and workshops can generate the interest and attention of the students in working towards science models, diagrams and posters to solve local issues of sanitation, health and cleanliness and their corresponding challenges and opportunities.
4. Using differently colored sticky notes both by teacher/instructor and students can further help in scientific concept building through either individual or coordinated group activities about health, sanitation and cleanliness.
5. Use of chalks and black boards, use of colorful diagrams and posters; simple schematic charts, flow charts and word diagrams; vibrant cartoons, interactive word games, quizzes, simple daily life issues based science puzzles can progressively strengthen both formal and informal communication between the students and teacher/instructor.
6. Drawing pictures and images, using board work for better communication, small acts or plays in delivering idea or concept in colloquial terms, demonstrations by using specimens and scientific models, simple fill in the blanks like tasks to make students think and analyze, programs such go as you like, use of songs, rhymes and poems to communicate an idea or concept or in formulating a scientific explanation to a natural phenomena, sharing personal experiences and anecdotes of students and in class attempt to provide scientific explanations and exchanging information with respect to sanitation, cleanliness and health in simplest forms.
7. Short discussions, in class debates, listing merits and demerits through class room interactions and board works, essay and drawing competitions on different science related topics.
8. Teaching children in a stepwise fashion how to provide logical and scientific explanations to their day to day life issues will slowly help building awareness regarding environment and health among students.
9. Students from backward communities and remote localities are mostly shy and hence group work/group activities can help in better connecting students and teachers in exp
   loring different scientific topics. Such an approach can help in eradicating initial discomfort, building rapport among students.

   The following tools can be used:

     a.Use of multi-logues (in place of teacher monologues or teacher-student dialogues only) increasing participation level of all groups of students and attracting student interest towards related topics in the class or workshop.

   b. Making interactions as multidimensional as possible.

   c. Conducting classes in nature for a change greatly help in increasing student participation and also better expose them to d. Advanced students can be exposed to movies, documentaries, videos to build up their awareness, ideas and concepts around better health, good sanitation habits and cleanliness real life examples and issues.

10.  Topics that can be raised or covered to increase scientific awareness about better health, hygiene and cleanliness and about their local environment and society are suggested as follows:
    1. Ecosystem & Environment: Sustainable crop production, use and application of different locally prepared bio pesticides and bio insecticides using indigenous knowledge and practices instead of synthetic agrochemicals in crop production, importance of organic farming and agriculture, sustainable management of dairy and livestock, conventional and non-conventional energy resources, different forms of agricultural pollution, challenges of idol immersions and related socio-religious practices, wildlife conservation, sustainable environment management, conservation of local ecosystem and environment and local forest resources, negative impacts of over exploitation of local resources, positive impacts of
    2. Food, Health & Sanitation: Sanitation, hygiene, cleanliness, rural waste management, food production and food processing at rural levels, food security, food crisis, human and animal health and disease management, biotic and abiotic pathogens, their simple management and control for maintaining good health and hygiene etc
    3. Society: Rural and public administration and governance, local e-governance, basics of banking and financial transactions, government and cooperative structure and management, basic and rural economics, etc In the economically and technologically advanced western nations with over 99% literacy rates and with extremely high level of digital literacy, the role of conventional library has been undoubtedly questioned. However, in a developing country like India with an average literacy rate of only ~74% and penetration level of newspapers to only 25% of an estimated over one billion strong population, the importance of conventional libraries and printed books will remain relevant for the next few decades for sure. Hence it will be necessary to establish small libraries promoting education and awareness at the grass root level to support the kids as well as adults with education resources for their targeted empowerment. In addition to the drive for cleanliness and sanitation, mass education campaigns will also be also necessary for building environmental and eco-sociological awareness among our deprived backward community and members. The comprehensive and multi-facility chain of postal-banking-educationlibrary (PBEL) network, if efficiently implemented and executed, can also revolutionize and transform rural India towards modernization, with stable economic and social progress.