Festivals affect Adivasi students

Adivasi children participating in Gussadi festival 

Festivals especially Diwali, proved to be a bane for Adivasi children’s education in the district.

It is found in a survey conducted by Council for Social Development (CSD) that Adivasi students are poor in their studies. Majority of Adivasis students studying in 

Tribal Ashram schools are not returning to hostels after coming home to celebrate their festivals. Adivasis celebrate Diwali for one month.    

There are incidents where students had not returned to hostels after coming to home for Pola festival.

However, it is true that active participation of the children in their festivals will certainly help in preserving their unique traditions, customers and carry forward to coming generations.

Educational experts say it is high time for the Adivasis to concentrate more on their studies at school and college level while participating in their festivities once in a while without disrupting their studies as education is the only instrument which can change their lives and give them a better life.  

Kanaka Yadavrao, district president of Adivasi JAC, said student’s attendance has fallen to 20 percent in some Tribal Ashram schools during festival seasons in tribal areas at Asifabad, Utnoor, Narnoor, Sirpur (U), Kerameri, Indravelli and some other places in the district.

He found that students who gone to their homes to celebrate Polala which fell on September 13 had not returned to hostels even after celebrating Dasara and Diwali festivals. It is almost two and half months as most of the Adivasi children interested in participating Gussadis.   

Wardens and teachers of Tribal Ashram schools have started visiting Adivasi gudems to take back students to hostels and convincing their parents to send hostels just after Diwali festival but very few students turned up to hostels.

The dropout rate is high and low pass percentage among the Adivasi students of schools and colleges in the district.

Parents are also not sending their children to schools and hostels during festival season.

Adivasis leaders expressed serious concern over poor attendance in Tribal Ashram schools and appealed to the parents not to retain their children at home.

Adivasi elders appealed to the officials of the ITDA, Utnoor to cut the holidays maximum for other festivals which are not important for the Adivasis but give at least ten days holidays for Diwali festival as it was their biggest festival and they can’t celebrate the Diwali festival especially Gussadis without their children.

Adivasis children actively participate in Gussadis and even some of them become Gussadis and visit villages along with their elders during Diwali.

R. Balaji, social researcher, Council for Social Development (CSD), who conducted survey recently in the Tribal Ashram Schools in the district, said the Adivasis children had no minimum knowledge of reading and writing and among them the standards very poor among the students of Kolams, a primitive tribal group, in the district.

‘Adivasi students are not returning to hostels for months who gone to their homes on holidays and there was lack of supervision on the students by the hostel wardens and poor attendance of the students’, observed Balaji.

Eight teams from CSD are conducting survey in the government school and hostels to assess the conditions there and educational standards in the districts.

There are as many as 113 Tribal Ashram Schools and Tribal Welfare hostels, 6 Gurukulams, 13 KGBVS, 4 mini- gurkulams and 905 Government Primary schools (PS) under Tribal Welfare in the District.