Agenda item 3
I am Sister Stella Balthazar from India and I speak on behalf of Franciscans
International.
Tribal peoples are a vulnerable and discriminated group in India even 56 years
after the independence of the country. Isolated from the mainstream society,
astounded and unable to fight against the onslaught of the highly competitive
surroundings, they remain a silenced lot in their inability to fight for their
rights and freedoms. They are exploited by the land lords in worst forms of
land grabbing, underemployment, ill-treatment. Very often, their life is threatened
if they assert themselves.
Vengapathy, Anaikarai are but few examples of the hundreds of villages and hamlets
of the Urali/Irula tribals in the hilltracks of Sathyamangalam, Athikadavu and
Bargur forest range in the districts of Erode and Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu as
well as Palakad district in Kerala. Here, peoples are deprived of their basic
rights such as housing, sanitation, healthcare, and education. The Bihils of
Rajasthan and the Santhals of Bihar and Jharkand also live in similar, deplorable
conditions.
In particular, children are the most neglected and victims of multiple forms
of discrimination. As a result of poverty, migration, illiteracy and inadequate
health-care, the Urali/Irula children are oppressed in a variety of ways. Specifically,
we would like to call the Working Group’s attention to the fact that education
for those children is a remote possibility at the moment. Literacy in these
villages hardly reaches 5%.
Although the government has built some residential tribal schools in Asanur,
Thalamalai, Manar and Bargur, these institutions do not cater to the needs of
all the villages. They are far fetched from the reach of tribal children. For
instance, Asanur is filled and overflowing to its capacity and unable to accommodate
the children from the area. Moreover, tribal children do not have access to
formal schools in many of the hamlets, in most cases, because their births are
not registered. It is therefore urgent that the government in conjunction with
the local administrations sets up schools in the villages to favor an easy access
to education for all children. The educational system is also in need of special
curriculum integrating tribal values and keeping their oneness with nature.
There is no controversy that the right to education is a fundamental, universal
human right. However, the impact of some negative structural adjustment programs
and the rooted discriminatory attitude towards tribal peoples led to a situation
where the allocation of funds for education, agriculture and health have been
slashed. As a consequence, in Tamil Nadu, the government has withheld the appointment
of teachers in the minority run government aided schools since the beginning
of this month. In a country where literacy is the prime need of future generations
such a move is bound to further the marginalization and discrimination of the
marginalized, namely the Tribals and the Dalits (the untouchable castes). We
strongly urge the government of India to revoke this unjust decision which will
further discriminate against this group.
Franciscan International would like to call upon the government of India to
consider the following recommendations for action:
1. To undertake adequate steps to register the birth of every child in the tribal
villages and hamlets and deliver birth certificates to each children. A survey
should be done on the enrollment of Urali/Irula Tribal children in schools.
2. To create adequate educational institutions for the Urali/Irula Tribal children
within their reach.
3. To provide adequate infrastructure facilities such as transportation for
the Urali/Irula children to have regular access to schools.
4. To integrate, with the assistance of NGOs, in school curricula the communitarian
and life-sustaining values of the Tribal culture and to enable the children
to feel respectable to claim their culture with dignity.
5. To integrate the academic excellence of the children with the tribal way
of life which is closely aligned with Nature and to restructure the curricula
in order to be more life oriented.
Urgent Attentionis required on the
PLIGHT OF THE CHILDREN TAKEN FOR SUB-CONTRACT WORK BY SUGAR INDUSTRY.
The situation of the tribal children are most pitiable who are taken for forced
labour from the age of eight onwards. The parents are paid a sum of Rs: 500/-(
less than 10 Euro). Boys and girls are employed and made to stay in the field
day and night. They are given a bag of broken rice ( the waist after cleaning
the good rice). The children have to borrow money for other expenses from the
contractor and this makes them dependent in a state of debt to the sub-contractor.
When harvesting is over in one area the workers are moved to the next area.
The children are deprived of adequate nutritious food, security, health care
and education.
Plight of the Children of Slum Dwellers who are rag picking:
To present the progress of the efforts of the governments in preventing the
subcontracting of Urali/irula Tribal children in forces labour by sub-contractors
for Sugar cane harvesting for Sugar Mills.
