In Daba school: tigers to move in

In her fifties, Ashok Rani Gond has never been to school, but her nine-year-old grandson won’t miss a day, she says laughing. “Ek bhi din nahin chhoda [not even a single day has he missed,]” she tells PARI.

Her grandson is one of the 39 children enrolled at Daba’s primary school. This village of roughly 500 people (Census 2011) lies in a corner of Damoh district, surrounded by low hills, open grassland and patches of agricultural land. Most families – mainly Gond Adivasis – practice a little agriculture and keep cattle.

Many adults have never been to school - 50 per cent of Gond Adivasis are not literate, says this 2013 report.

So Daba school has always had some reluctant scholars and their numbers change with the season: those missing school will swell in number when work dries up and families migrate taking the young ones with them. But some just prefer to stay home to play around the house – climbing mango, guava and other trees is infinitely more attractive for any 6 to 9-year olds.

One of the two teachers at the school – he was born and grew up here – Tarachand Yadav has a strategy for these hesitant scholars. He waits a day or two, and then walks over to the truant’s home armed with a few chocolates. “I first talk to the parents, requesting them to send their children,” he says. “They tell me, ‘Master, we leave early in the morning for wage labour…what are we to do?’”

As India's forests are increasingly being closed off to Adivasis and other forest-dependent communities, distress migration is the only option. Children, especially young girls, are taken along and lose out on schooling.

A familiar face in the village, Yadav then persuades them with practical reasons: “I say to them, ‘you are doing mazdoori [wage labour work] now, but if your children study and get good jobs, they will take care of you in your old age’. Like this I try to make them understand.”

The chat ends with parents shouting out to the young truants lurking nearby, “see! master has come, tell him you will go.”

At this point Tarachand hands over the chocolates. To the child. The bribe works like a charm, he says; the next day they are back in school, immersed in formal learning. His 'sweet' treats are critical – in MP, almost half the children in Class 2 (aged 7-8 years) cannot recognise numbers 1 to 9, says the 2022 Annual Status of Education Report (Rural).

“Primary school is the foundation of education,” says Narmada Patel, the other teacher who joined Daba school in 2010. “They never forget what they learn in these years.” So, getting them to come and then stay in school is critical, especially in Madhya Pradesh which ranks among the lowest in the country for enrolment at the primary stage.

The two teachers share the load of 39 enrolled students, of whom 30 are Gond Adivasi. The rest are Other Backward Classes (OBC), and a few Dalits who prefer to identify themselves as ‘Harijan’. “We have every facility a child needs – they get two uniforms a year, all textbooks and workbooks are provided, and a midday meal,” says Patel.

Even so, children do drop out to travel with migrating parents, so the teachers have a ‘bridge’ class to bring them up to speed. “They are gone for 2-4 months, and have zero education. When they return, I put them into a separate group and teach them accordingly,” Yadav says.

“Many will drop out permanently [for wage work]. There is unemployment all around,” he adds.

Travelling along the forest boundary of Nauradehi Wildlife Sanctuary, you might miss the low stone sign with an arrow saying ‘Daba’. A further three kilometres down this mud path you hear the sound of children’s chatter --the Daba Prathmik Shala’s (primary school) presence marks the entrance to the village.

“There was a time when no one knew that a place called ‘Daba’ existed,” says Tarachand Yadav. “The village was like its name, ‘daba’ [held down],” he adds smiling. Even today, the village has no electricity, and residents manage with solar batteries.

The establishment of the primary school building brought official attention and recognition. “Sarkari log [state officials] began to visit. That’s how it got a nishan [mark of recognition],” says Yadav, whose presence in the village was instrumental in bringing them a school.

Born in Daba in a farmer’s family, Tarachand Yadav went to school in the neighbouring towns and finally on to Jabalpur – three hours away – where he did a Masters in Geography.

When he returned in the early nineties to join his father, he was the obvious choice for local parents to help with schooling. It became a little more formal when in 1997 he was paid Rs. 500 to teach under the Madhya Pradesh government’s Shiskshashala scheme (Education Guarantee Scheme). Under this scheme, the state guarantees a primary schooling facility to the children in a habitation where there is no such facility within a kilometre of where they live.

“I started under a tree,” recalls Yadav. “Then we moved to a jhopdi [makeshift structure],” he says. Three years later, the school was built and he took all the state exams to qualify as a teacher on the state payroll, and was duly appointed.

Yadav says his teaching has changed over the years. “Earlier we used to make them learn by rote – alphabets, numbers. Now we say, 10 plus one, 10 plus two, not 11 and 12, so children pick up further math operations easily.” Instead of learning the alphabet by rote, they first learn to recognise a single letter in different words.

These new ideas have been seeded in the bi-monthly teacher skill training. “We also co-teach with them, and they test their skills on their colleagues in the group,” says Asif Beg. He is a resource person at non-governmental organisation, Azim Premji Foundation in Damoh which supports teacher skill training.

When they wrap up primary school, most students move on to residential schools in Manka or Hardua villages which lie around 5 km away. “Going and coming every day [on a dirt road in the jungle] is not possible, so our children prefer to stay there,” says Yadav.

But even so, numbers drop. Only six per cent of students from Scheduled Tribes will enrol for higher education, says this 2021 Ministry of Education report.

The complete absence of electricity in Daba has not helped. "We use only solar lights. Sometimes they don’t work. It’s difficult for our children to study in the nights," says parent Harish Singh Adivasi, a 40-year-old farmer.

In the almost three decades of the school, a few students have gone into state jobs like the police and teaching; several go on to get college degrees. The teachers say proudly that their girl students are marrying later now. Despite that, MP has the highest number (17 per cent) of girls not in school (ASER 2022).

In 2022, the MP government pushed for a new scheme called CM Rise - large educational institutions of K-12 (kindergarten to Class 12) , drawing students from a 5 to 10 km radius. The construction of these new schools is already underway in Damoh's heavily tribal block of Tendukheda.

‘Shikshak beheenshala [students without regular teacher]’ is a slight used to describe schools in tribal areas here. “In tribal areas where teachers were reluctant to go, the 2018 Niti Aayog plan for merging primary, middle and secondary schools in the same area into one campus helped those students,” points out Upendra Singh, district leader, APF Damoh. The merger was called 'Ek Parisar Ek Shaala’ (one area one school), and 35,113 schools were merged into 16,076 campuses. Of these, 75 per cent were elementary schools (Class 1 to 8).

In other words, 19,037 schools that once served these areas, no longer exist as before. They’re ‘merged’ into others that can be dauntingly distant for children and parents. The government’s approach is that they get much better equipped schools this way.

But Upendra Singh feels the new [large] structures will deter tribal and other children who live near forests, and will have to travel long distances. "Dropouts will increase," he cautions.

Further, teachers from the community, empathetic and sensitive to their students’ situations, will likely be replaced by smart boards and ed tech in these mega structures of 2,000-3,000 students. While technology has its uses, it tends to overpower the crucial teacher-student relationship, critical to first-generation learners - as many tribal students here are.

Yadav and Patel are a few years from retirement and they will be the last teachers of the school in Daba. India’s 54th tiger reserve is swallowing it up along with over 40 villages, for the newly formed Veerangana Durgavati Tiger Reserve (VDTR).

VDTR's Nauradehi was originally maintained as one of only two sanctuaries for the endangered Indian Grey Wolf. But in our single-minded focus on big cats to the exclusion of all other endangered species, this too has become another reserve for the tiger. But the tiger in turn will have to make room for the much publicised, soon-to-arrive, newly-imported cheetahs. Read: No crying wolf in Nauradehi

“The school will go, we will also go,” says Yadav. But he’s hoping his students will not drop out.

Ashok Rani is certain her grandson won’t. “When we move, he will go to school wherever we move to,” she told PARI firmly while the 8-year-old nearby nodded in agreement.