Lack of resources leaves students of tribal MP village with no access to education

In Dhakadkhedi, school children could not attend classes during the pandemic due to the digital divide in rural areas and poor mobile connectivity, among other factorsNeemuch: A single upper primary school with classes till standard 8 was the only ray of hope for the 136 students of Dhakadkhedi, a tribal-dominated village under Manasa tehsil of Madhya Pradesh’s Neemuch district. However, these 63 girls and 73 boys found themselves with no access to education during the pandemic, when schools were ordered shut and online classes became the new norm.This village, with a population of 784, is home to 160 families. Manasa, the nearest town and also the tehsil headquarters, is 42 km away. A pucca road connects Dhakadkhedi to Manasa via Kanjarda village. Here, agriculture is the mainstay and a majority of the locals are farm labourers who survive on a meagre daily wage of Rs 150.Apart from the upper primary school, a student hostel run by the Tribal Welfare Department had been supporting the education of 26 children from nearby villages.“While parents are apprehensive about getting their young children enrolled at hostels, they do so hoping that they will have a better future,” said Prahlada Solanki, a teacher at a primary school in Dhakadkhedi.Ineffective models of educationThe Madhya Pradesh government came up with three education models to bridge the digital divide for tribal children — DigiLEP, Doordarshan and mohalla classes. However, none of these proved particularly effective for Dhakadkhedi.Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan had launched DigiLEP in April 2020 as a ‘Learning Enhancement Programme’ that aimed to promote online education in the state. Back then, he sounded certain that this application would be a one-of-a-kind platform that would connect clusters of teachers and students from Class 1 to 8 through WhatsApp groups, allowing them to share textbook-based videos.“DigiLEP – Aapki Studies, Aapke Ghar is an app made for this purpose,” Chauhan had said, though it remained inaccessible to the tribal students of Dhakadkhedi, and the insubstantial economic state of the locals questioned the efficacy of this online education model.Of the 63 girls studying in the government school of Dhakadkhedi, only five have an Android phone available at home — the minimum requirement to access DigiLEP. The few who did have access to smartphones could hardly afford to spend on regular recharges for internet use.Representative Image/Flickr/Deepa SrikantaiahCompounding the problem was the lack of consistent mobile connectivity in Dhakadkhedi and the half a dozen nearby villages, with the nearest base transceiver station, or cell tower, in Kanjarda. One had to head for the upper reaches of the village in the hope of catching a network, and even then, it was barely good enough to make a phone call.Solanki explained: “DigiLEP could not be effective here because people did not have Android phones, and even mobile networks remained patchy. We had tried to give better education to students, especially girls, and had flagged these local concerns to the district education authorities.”As the second education model, the state School Education Department had announced that it would broadcast class-wise lessons through Doordarshan and All India Radio. This medium failed as well in Dhakadkhedi due to the lack of television sets and radios in the majority of the households here.PS Goyal, district project coordinator of Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, a government initiative to provide equitable education, said they had apprised authorities about the various problems in these villages that teachers had flagged. “The district education setup, in the interim, was banking on mohalla classes to fill this vacuum,” he added. “The dedication shown by teachers even in such trying circumstances to teach children and ensure that they are not denied education was worth appreciating.”Representative Image/Flickr/Deepa SrikantaiahThese mohalla classes were the third model the state government had come up with. These had looked the most promising for rural Madhya Pradesh. Under this approach, teachers were to  ‘take classes of’ school children at two different chaupals, or the village’s gathering places, from 10 am to 2 pm every day. Contrary to the expectations, only five to six students on an average attended these mohalla classes in this remote village.In these sessions, all the children, irrespective of which class they were studying in, were made to sit together. They would have to wait for their turn as the appointed teacher would attend to each pupil individually. Given the erratic schedules and disconnected learning techniques, parents were not keen on sending their children to these sessions, and students were not enthused by this mode of learning either. Lack of mid-day meals, sports, and other regular school activities further discouraged parents and their wards from relying on this government initiative. The helplessness resulting from such lack of resources is evident among parents and children. Nandlal Tawad, one such parent from Dhakadkhedi, said he couldn’t afford to buy a smartphone for his children because of his poor income. As a result, they remained disconnected from their classes during the pandemic. This, and the lack of mobile connectivity, stood in the way of his dream of seeing his children get quality education.Gender inequalityAdding to the problem was how female wards continued to play second fiddle to boys when it came to attending mohalla classes. Solanki acknowledged that in Dhakadkhedi “only a few students had benefited from mohalla classes, that too mostly boys, and that the attendance of girls had remained relatively lower”.According to a policy brief by the Right to Education forum, as many as 10 million girls were at a risk of dropping out of secondary schools due to pandemic-induced reasons such as a downward spiral of family income and digital inaccessibility. Moreover, even pre-pandemic, Madhya Pradesh ranked among the top three states where more than 8 percent of girls stayed ‘out of school’ (dropouts as well as those who never went to school), according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2016. The need for unaffordable smart devices and fluctuating network connectivity had added to this education barrier manifold in Dhakadkhedi. The nearby villages of Danthalai, Khedabaraji, Kundalia Khurd, Kundaliya Buzurg, Makodi Modi, Gothra and Nayagaon did not fare any better either.Traditional gender norms tend to push schoolgirl dropouts towards household chores and eventually to marriage. The ASER suggests that the predominant reason for girls to drop out of school is family constraints, and enrolling these girls back remains a struggle.Dinesh Padaypati, a social worker in Manasa, explained: “We wanted these girls to study. Along with ensuring a proper mobile network, the government should have provided Android mobile phones to girls in these areas, so that they could have continued their studies.”“There is also a concerted effort to educate the rural populace about the perils of child marriage, which primarily takes place due to lack of education,” he added. “Despite our efforts, child marriages continue to take place and ruin any chance a girl has to study further.”

Small farmers fail to get loans, good yield prices amid Covid-19

Since September 25, the employees of the Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) yard in Neemuch district of Madhya Pradesh are on a strike to protest against the Model Market Act. Small farmers of the district have been badly affected because of the strike and COVID-19.On September 19, the traders of the APMC had announced a five-day bandh to protest against the inaction of the government regarding the rising cases of coronavirus. The mandi had started procurement only two days before this, and only a few farmers had been able to sell their produce. As farmers are unable to sell their produce owing to indefinite strike from September 25, most of them are forced to sell their yield for lower prices. Some farmers claim that they have sold their produce at a quarter of the cost incurred.As farmers get ready for the next sowing season, they need money to cover the costs, and thus, are forced to sell their yield to local traders. They are also unable to get loans as moneylenders are charging high interests. Farmers say they have exhausted almost all of their savings. The reduced rainfall in the monsoon has also affected the yield of the soybean crop. If the total expenditure is estimated, a farmer has to bear a loss of thousands of rupees per bigha (1 bigha=12,000 square feet). The soybean crop, which was sold at Rs 3,500 per quintal in the mandi, is being sold at Rs 2,500 to shopkeepers and traders in the village. The absence of proper storage facilities also affects the small farmers and selling in the town would mean that they’d have to incur huge transportation costs.Though the governments, at the central- and the state-level, have announced many schemes during the coronavirus pandemic, the benefit of those scheme has failed to reach the beneficiaries in the district, farmer associations say. Arjun Singh Borana, president, Bhartiya Kisan Union, Neemuch district, stated that the government had promised loans for cattle owners and small farmers, but the banks have still not issued anything. During the coronavirus pandemic, many small farmers have been unable to get the benefit of government schemes and only the middlemen have benefitted from it, he alleged. Mangal Kushwaha, a farmer in Bhatkheri village, Neemuch district, stated that he had sowed soybean in three bighas of agricultural land, but he only had a yield of two quintals. Owing to the closure of mandis, he has been forced to sell his produce for Rs 2,500 per quintal, while the price in the APMC was around Rs 3,500, he added.He stated that he needed money for the next crop cycle, and was forced to buy sprinklers for irrigation as there was less rainfall this year. For this, he had to get a loan at high interest rates.  Another farmer from the district, Dhanraj Patidar, from Palsoda village, stated that apart from soybean, he had also sowed different crops but failed to get any profit as the mandis are closed. He said he was compelled to sell his produce to a trader at cheap prices.(This article is a part of a series on Covid's impact on India's marginal farmers. The series has been funded by Internews Europe.)