“Didi, lagta nahi hai ki zada padhai kar paenge. Lagta toh hai ki apne aap se 12th tak toh kar lena chahiye kisi bhi tarah paise juta kar. Par 9th se bohot anusashan se padhna padta hai, tuition lagana padega. Kitaben khareedni padegi”, says Rueben, a 13 year old Christian Santhali student studying in 8th grade in a government school in a village in Dumka, Jharkhand.
But even as he says it, he’s already doing the math: secondary school is 12 kilometers away, his family needs him to work the farm, and teachers at his current school barely show up.
Rueben wants to go into the Army, and imagines himself protecting his country. But sitting in the 8th grade, he finds it difficult to actually learn and attain the skills he would need to reach his goals. In his quest to realize his dream, he says he will have to do mehnat (hard work) in the classroom but what that entails is unclear to him.
He does want to move forward in life but the chances of this happening, according to him, are almost next to nil. He feels he is set up against a system that is working against his aspirations. He has no roadmap to becoming a soldier, let alone a doctor or teacher many of his classmates dream of becoming.
What Rueben and his peers do know, intimately and undeniably, is the path that leads to the mines and stone quarries.
When aspirations are a luxury
Many Santhali students from the 7th and 8th grade aspire to become either an Army officer, a teacher or a doctor. But when asked if someone they know from their village has become a teacher or an Army officer, they all go silent.
On the other hand, when they are asked if they know a mine/stone quarry worker almost all of them raise their hand.
Dumka is not far from some of Jharkhand’s most mineral-rich districts such as Pakur, Dhanbad and Ramgarh, where stone quarries are as common as aspirations are rare.
Jharkhand accounts for around 40% of India’s mineral reserves with Quartz, Granite, Felspar and China Clay being sourced from Dumka. In the Dumka circle, 1,540 minor mineral mines have been leased—with the highest number in Sahebganj and Pakur, followed by Dumka. Majority of the mines in Dumka are stone mines.
Because of lack of local employment, people either move out of the state or work in these stone mines as labourers.
In an activity, the students are asked to chart out two career paths for a fictitious Santhali student who is their own age. The first is to chart out a pathway towards becoming a teacher/doctor, and the other is towards becoming a mine worker.
Rueben, along with others, started working on this activity.
When thinking about someone becoming a doctor or a teacher from their background, they were disconcerted while doing so, because apart from saying mehnat karni padegi (we must work hard), they did not have any clear idea about how the path ahead would materialize. They abandoned the teacher scenario.
Moving on, they explored their character's journey towards working in a mine. Possible motivations included family medical emergencies, financial needs requiring part-time work alongside school, parents' deaths, or academic struggles due to attendance issues and textbook comprehension difficulties.
They suggested the character might face severe punishment from teachers for incomplete homework, leading to falling behind and eventually dropping out.
Rueben noted these misfortunes were just one setback away for him and his peers, a common village occurrence.
Returning to the prompt of the teacher with determination this time, Rueben decided if he was to become a teacher, he should first work on a farm to support his family and fund his education.
He devised an ambitious schedule: working 4am-12pm for income, attending school, then helping family with farming. Despite its impracticality, Rueben believed this dedication was necessary to build capital for education beyond 8th grade, including better books, tuition classes, and eventually college.
To build a good relationship with teachers, he decided he would need to have consistent attendance with prompt homework completion.
Pursuing this career would, however, also be very isolating for him with little support from parents or teachers.
Though frightening, Rueben found comfort believing that becoming a teacher would finally earn him respect and recognition rather than being labeled "unable."
Rueben, without knowing how the education system was ideally supposed to be providing for him, found himself grasping at straws, without many options in the face of harsh reality. The onus of moving forward in his life, to climb the ladder of social mobility, lay squarely on his shoulders.
Education that fails
The New Education Policy, 2020 confers on education the power of being a great leveller and defines it as the best tool for achieving economic and social mobility, inclusion, and equality.
But in Rueben’s village school, there are 6 teachers for 210 students. Of these, only 3 are responsible for Grades 6 to 8. Classrooms for the older students are on the first floor, which teachers avoid climbing.
Rueben says, “Sir comes once a week and gives us classwork. He doesn’t explain.”
Finding himself without a teaching presence or reliable guidance about the subjects, Rueben has turned to YouTube. “I bought a phone along with my friend after working in a brick kiln for 8 months during the pandemic”, says Rueben. But the YouTube channels does not teach math in Hindi as is prescribed in his school which makes it difficult for him to follow the concepts fully.
The cracks in Jharkhand’s education system show up sharply in the numbers. According to the ASER 2024 report, only 41.2 percent of Grade 8 students in rural Jharkhand can do basic division. More than 30 percent cannot read a Grade 2-level text. Yet, Jharkhand's promotion rate for upper primary schools stands at a misleading 96 percent, while net enrollment drops from 89.3 percent at the elementary level to 41.3 percent in secondary school.
This shows that even when the state enables economically and socially marginalised students to get a foothold in the system, it continues to exclude them from attaining the educational level that counts.
Discipline Over Development
Education here isn't about learning, it's about obedience. Classrooms instil discipline in the young, with Adivasi students as primary recipients. Upper-caste teachers pride themselves on Adivasi students correctly reciting the national anthem and India pledge.
Students who join the morning assembly late or wear incorrect uniforms face corporal punishment or verbal abuse. "COVID-19 really affected the discipline we had taught these students... They do not even remember that they have to stand for the national anthem," the Science teacher said, expressing exasperation with the 'undisciplined' nature of Adivasi students.
Discipline, for teachers, takes precedence over education because it is more important for teachers that Adivasi students follow instructions and remain amenable. “They beat us more than they teach us,” mumbled Rueben hesitantly, fearful of this information reaching his teacher.
Another student says, “they just try to find an excuse to hit us.” Teachers often claim Adivasi children aren’t capable of grasping academic concepts.
As the Science teacher—who belongs to an upper caste—in Rueben’s school describes, “They don’t have enough brains to work hard and reach beyond labouring (careers). All the smart kids are in private schools; we get students who are less capable; so, it is unfair to expect them to reach the same height as students from private schools.”
This is far from the truth, as many Adivasi children categorically said that they wanted to learn more. They especially wanted to learn English, because it would help them to communicate better and help them to progress.
But this school isn’t a space where Rueben knows he will learn. Rueben’s grades are good because teachers help him during exams, whispering answers or writing them on the board. “Learning outcomes” are being gamed for numbers. But no one asks if Rueben is actually learning.
When the School Doesn’t See You
His father, a mason who studied till the 5th grade, insists Rueben work on the farm before school. During the harvest season, children don’t come to school because they’re needed in the fields.
But the academic calendar doesn’t adjust. The curriculum doesn’t pause. And teachers respond with threats: show up, or get a transfer certificate.
If he rebels against farm work, his father threatens him by withholding food. The work Rueben undertakes, sometimes leaves him no time for studies. “He says if I am not able to earn through any other means, at least I will have the farm to fall back on,” Rueben says, almost believing what his father instilled in him.
Implicit in this statement are parents’ reservations about the actual utility of education but parents are not to blame here. In Rueben’s village, people who have managed to finish school have not been able to secure permanent jobs and are seen as doing either manual labour or odd jobs, with some out-migrating.
Parents weigh their options and sometimes decide to avoid the opportunity costs that are entailed in getting secondary school certificates that will ultimately be useless.
The institution of education realises and sees the challenges that the Adivasi youth grapple with, but when it comes to addressing their needs, the system shies away. In this rigid structure, farming is seen as failure. Manual labour is shamed. But in Rueben’s world, it’s survival.
A System Designed Without Them
The dichotomy between manual and intellectual labour that the education system propagates is not lost on students. This production of manual labour as inferior, which fits well with existing caste hierarchies in Indian society is only accentuated by the schooling system. The parents on the other hand try to bridge this gap by making sure that their children do not separate themselves from manual labour entirely.
Teachers, instead of acknowledging and understanding the realities that define student lives, often label their parents unpadh (illiterate), as those who do not understand or appreciate the value of education. Adivasi parents are visualised only as ‘drunk’ and ‘disinterested’ in the education of their children.
In policy meetings, tribal education is often reduced to tokens, Rs 1,500 in annual scholarships under Pre-Matric schemes, or promises to teach in tribal languages.
The new teaching model in Jharkhand has promised teaching in tribal languages till the primary school as part of implementing the NEP. But this was attempted in 2008 as well under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan where Santhali books were printed but there were no teachers employed to teach from those books.
Reuben receives Rs 1,500 every year under the scheme but his parents save this amount to be used in an event of an emergency. With the demands of the education system, Rueben believes the scholarship amount is not enough to make a tangible difference anyway.
Rueben, when asked to define himself by naming the qualities he possesses, writes matter-of-factly: "hum gareeb hain (we are poor)" and "hum Santhali hain (we are Santhali)." These phrases define the character of Rueben’s family life and are the most important aspects that dictate every decision made by them.
The school calendar, the mindset of teachers, the pedagogy, curriculum and timings need to be contextualised to the local contexts of the Adivasi students, if they are to encash the promised development of education.
The students need to be given spaces to thrive, rather than feeling rejected by the system. They are currently bound by a set number of aspirations and bogged down by the realities they see in their surroundings. Set up against a system that makes them feel like they don’t belong, Adivasi students feel their futures will reproduce their current realities.
(Bhawna Parmar is an independent researcher-designer working in education and youth studies. She is currently building a grounds-up futures-oriented pedagogy through action-research. Trained as a social designer, she is a graduate of Ambedkar University Delhi. The views expressed in this piece are the author's own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)