The New Indian Express ·
Education
CJP to launch 'Adivasi School Thik Karo' campaign in Maharashtra's Gadchiroli
Highlighting the government apathy faced by tribal schools in India, Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke on Wednesday announced the launch of the 'Adivasi School Thik Karo' campaign at Gadchiroli in Maharashtra from September 17.
Addressing a press conference, Dipke pointed out that the campaign is to draw the government's attention towards the issues, including discrimination faced by tribal students.
A month back, the CJP launched the 'School Thik Karo' (Fix the Schools), a nationwide campaign aimed at improving the condition of rural and urban public schools.
Dipke said, "Schools in tribal regions across India have been neglected by all governments in the last 80 years. Therefore, we are starting the 'Adivasi School Thik Karo' campaign from Thursday in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra."
"As part of the exercise, CJP representatives will visit tribal schools and inspect the facilities and infrastructure," he said.
"Almost all governments have ignored tribal students. Political parties build their party headquarters in every district by spending crores of rupees, but they don't have funds to give to tribal residential schools that are mostly operated from rented properties," the CJP convenor said.
Dipke called for focusing on students and schools in tribal belts, saying they have a lot of potential.
"The government will have to prioritise the tribal community as it has a very big population. Just claiming a 7.8 GDP growth rate or talking about becoming a USD 5 trillion economy is not enough," he said.
"We request the government to focus on tribal schools and tribal students and students from the rural areas across the country, because these tribal and rural students also are the future of the country just like students from big cities and private schools," he said.
According to Dipke, more than 590 tribal students died in Maharashtra in the last two years.
"Many tribal students die of snakebites. But these deaths fail to elicit any response from the government. Had these deaths occurred in Pune or Mumbai, it would have created a furore across the country," he said.
More than 30 tribal students died in Balaghat, a tribal belt in Madhya Pradesh, in the last two months.
"Deaths of tribal students also took place in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Uttarakhand," he said.
The families of deceased tribal students do not even get honourable compensation, according to him.
In Rajasthan, the families of deceased tribal students were given goats, while in Madhya Pradesh, Rs 4 lakh was given, he claimed.
Dipke also raised concerns over Eklavya Model residential schools and alleged that 477 out of the 720 of these schools are non-functional.
"Where will these tribal students go to study?" he asked.
Tribal students only have a 22.8 per cent enrolment rate in higher education, he said, adding that just 130 Scheduled Tribe (ST) applicants got admission in IITs.
"Why is the number of admissions and faculty in IITs so low? This is nothing else but outright discrimination," he alleged.
Later in the day, Dipke is scheduled to interact with tribal students in Nagpur.
