them faced the challenge o f people’s cynical attitude towards government sponsored initiatives, and hence they had to circumvent this attitude through a mass appeal o f their most pressing/glaring problem.
62 Denzil Saldanha (1995), ‘Literacy Campaigns in Maharashtra and Goa - Issues, Trends and Direction’ in
EPW Vol. XXX, No. 20, 1172-1196
63 ibid.
relatively homogeneous ethnic identity can facilitate or militate against the campaign approach depending on sensitivity to cultural identity based on orality and to pressing economic issues that might have taken political forms of expression’64. Saldanha’s analysis seems to be logical as far as his broad and general understanding o f macro level societal factors influencing ‘literacy’ and ‘illiteracy’ are concerned. About the micro-level successes or failures of TLC his judgement seems to be influenced by official over-statement and thus appear highly exaggerated and misplaced. For example, he writes that ‘the campaigns have succeeded in temporarily organising a minority of the literate towards the literacy of the majority’ and that ‘the campaigns have brought them in closer contact with the people within a broader concept of shared citizenship’65. Shared citizenship involves a much stronger sense of the ‘individual’ participating as a member of a national public, having a sense of political equality with other citizens, particularly vis-a-vis the powerful bureaucrats. Saldanha neither defines his concept of citizenship nor gives any example of when and how individual adult learners have come to acquire such a sense of ‘shared citizenship’. Our field study suggests a different conclusion. Here, as an example, is a statement from the village chief o f Nawadih on the experience of adult learners of his village. This is the gist of what he said:
‘Literacy, of course, acim taur par (popularly) means reading and writing. But how does it make sense if I am not able to convey my point to you. That means, you should develop some ‘buddhf (understanding) also, so that you are able to talk, so that nobody cheats you. If you do not know a language, you can’t speak and people will use you. Dikus cheat us because we can’t properly speak their language. And how can we? They don’t speak our language but we have to speak theirs. So are these sahebs. How can we persuade them to give us what we want? They just want us, at times, to learn and do something. We cooperate if it helps us. When we don’t cooperate, they say, ‘ajib moorakh hai ’ (what a fool). They say - we are bad, foolish, backward, have no ‘buddhf (understanding), no ‘dimag’ (mind). This is what is also written in these books (primers). They will finally say, we don’t leam anything, we don’t know anything, still doubt the intentions of these officers. But the reality is that they are ‘beimaan’ (dishonest). They can’t explain when we ask for something in their offices, still they want to teach us the 3Rs. What can they teach us? How much they are interested, God knows. ... (TLC) ... will slowly have problems ... he won’t go, she won’t go, and slowly, after sometime, eveiybody will stop going. They don’t care for us; still they will lecture...’66
There is here a clear appreciation of the relation between language learning and social relations, in terms of ‘we’ and ‘they’. It is, however, difficult to isolate instances of
64 ibid.
66ibid’
Nawadih village Chief on 11/12/1994. The village Chief uttered a long statement with many repetitve things - a common characteristic o f oral grous. Here we are giving only the significant aspects o f his utterances.
heightened consciousness equally and individually for each member’s experience, particularly in the case of the younger generation of tribals. Tribal experiences with district officials and ‘Dikiis' either at a TLC meeting or elsewhere in public places vary greatly. Their experience is affected by various individual meanings and interpretations in both personal and social relations. They are affected by both conscious and unconscious acts of individuals concerned, and mediated through an overarching influence of history. A few of the adult tribals, particularly old ones like the village Chief, had never been to school. In their case, survival needs took precedence over schooling. Some among the older generation have had unfortunate experiences as students in schools and so they hardly believe that education or literacy learning will have any useful meaning in their lives, or even those of their children. There have been many occasions when students have been punished for speaking Santhali inside the school premises. Even adult tribals o f the younger generation have similar experiences of being treated badly by government officials and school teachers. Tribal ability or inability to converse and influence government officials and not-tribal school teachers have had different outcomes in the past, though in most cases unpleasant. The point here is that tribal relation with non-tribal communities, particularly with government officers, may not always have a predictable pattern particularly in situations where younger tribals see themselves in transition, as an ‘emerging’ and socially mobile group. Younger generation tribals are more willing to adopt mainstream values but they do so 011 their own terms. Thus, the tribal community is becoming internally more
heterogeneous and more dynamic than what government officials or the dominant community assume.
The younger Santhals see themselves as an ‘emergent’ community as can be seen in the discourse of the Jliarkhand movement and the social mobility observed among educated sections who adopt mainstream life-styles. Hence, any fixed or deterministic cultural notion of relations between two (tribal and non-tribal) communities can undermine sensitive working relations between them. The dominant (official and academic) notion about Santhali culture holds that they are generally a backward and primitive community. But such a notion cannot account for the element of flux and heterogeneity which Santhals as a community exhibit. For example, isolating their traditional learning styles, (i.e. multi purpose tVibal youth dormitories where training in various social skills and occupational training in community living were provided)67 and detennining how they may have
67 Sita Toppo (1979), Dynamics o f Educational Development in Tribal India , 282-285. Here Sita mentions about traditional youth dormitories for boys and girls which have existed since generations among the Oraons
influenced Santhali perceptions of the 3Rs, can lead to a failure to consider other learning styles that are associated in many meaningful ways with modem developments in culture and contact with the Dikus. The complex dynamics of Santhali community identity under these transitional conditions may or may not always clearly show a single pattern of behaviour towards dominant non-tribal institutions. This is not to say that Santhals have no culture or identity of their own, nor that they are like everybody else in the pan-Bihari identity. They are still visibly culturally distinct from the rest o f the non-tribal world. To consider them similar like other peasant communities, is a big mistake often characteristic of district officials. The Santhals are assumed to be no different from the rural non-tribal Biharis (i.e. mainstream landless peasantry and workers) in their use and knowledge of standard Hindi and other forms of knowledge. Santhals, like other rural Biharis, are extremely poor and ‘illiterate’. So they are treated by officials in terms of ‘what they do not have’, never in terms of ‘what they have’ as a socio-linguistic community of aspiring persons, so that they could be empowered with the help of their cultural base, with things which they consider as their own and from which they could start to learn. To assume that Santhals, or even Scheduled Caste Harijans (the ‘Untouchables’ of Hindu community) are no different from the mainstream underprivileged groups, is to overlook the ways in which these completely marginalised communities accommodate and resist other cultural and educational influences.
Santhals and other tribals in Bihar as a whole must be seen as emergent (fast changing and transitional) communities. The culture of tribals in the Chotanagpur region is not homogeneous, rather it is heterogeneous and pluralistic. Response to any state initiative must therefore be seen in terms of individual and group dynamics of each different person, community or village . The story of Birsa Munda (a famous tribal leader of Ranchi district), as described in the Bihar TLC Primer (Part III), was found to be at odds with the perception of the Santhals of Dumka. They saw Birsa’s attitude towards both British and the non-tribals (as well as fellow community men and women) and his cultural and religious attachment to both the Hindus and the Christian missionaries quite differently. Yet the Santhali adult learners read all the three TLC Primers. They did not reject these texts as completely false representations but tried to come to temis with it as something negotiable. What was at odds with tribal learner’s experience was that TLC Primers heated all tribals as homogeneous, fixed in time and place. By not including Santhali words and forms of speech, not a single
(tribals) o f Ranchi district. Such traditional dormitories were also reported (during our field-work) to exist in Dumka district; they performed similar functions in learning and training in community living.
word about Santhali culture and its achievement, nor a story about Siddho, Kanho, whom Santhals consider their leader, TLC officials, in an implicit way, had heated the Santhals and their attributes as unworthy of inclusion in an official text like TLC primer. The SRC (State Resource Centre, Patna) member, who (must have) suggested that the Birsa Munda stoiy be included in the TLC Primer as a lesson, as representing tribal values, was not, as Santhals believed, representative of the entire tribal community.
Our fieldstudy discussion with the Santhals about their life and diversity gives us a different understanding. It is different from the experiences of SRC members, Dumka district officials as well as the academic analyses of Denzil Saldanha, who has worked among the tribals of Thane district in Maharashtra. The adult learners have the highest communicative bond with TLC’s day-to-day activities, and with the local volunteers, but this decreased in terms of involvement, attachment and communication with the TLC texts, and decreased further when it came into contact with the senior district officials. In the day- to-day activities, learners interact with representatives from their own community (i.e. the VTs) who act as visible mediators of communication. But in case of interaction with the TLC text, there is no visible narrator, or a first person speaker. The learners do not see any name connected with the written words of these primers except in a few stories. Hence, the adult learners generally cannot identify with the speaker or writer of the text. This sort of ‘impersonal’ situation or context of message is unfamiliar to them in their own culture and speech-nonns. They camiot relate themselves with formal explanations or technical facts, or things which are impersonally presented. In such ‘structuralist-essayisf texts like the TLC primers, the learners camiot comprehend easily the contextual ‘meaning’ in a statement which is presented as an autonomous impersonal text. Secondly, the content and direction of these textual narratives represent a monologic appreciation of discursive features and intentions which are valued by the mainstream culture or the dominant community. Such monologic stories are seen not only to be authoritarian but also as distorted representations of the lives of tribal and illiterate people, calling for a blind and assimilative interaction.
Under the TLC, the tribal adult learners are required to ‘participate’ in particular ways laid down by officials. They are encouraged to accept what is said to them rather than what they think and understand. The TLC text is presented as complete, something self- contained, a thing to be internalised rather than to be interacted with. The TLC’s pedagogic practices thus reinforce the tribals’ past experiences in other spheres. Thus, far from making adult learners partners in a shared citizenship based on equal identity relations, as Denzil Saldanha suggests, the TLC seems to be re-enforcing the gap between communities.
Secondly, government officials have always tried to confuse the mobilisation of state resources with the mobilisation of people. The two are obviously different. People joined in TLCs because they were given hope. Some joined because of the pressure from local influential elites and out of false expectations of employment and other material benefits. It is wrong to equate people’s initial willingness and physical involvement with an institutionalised social practice. Even within the short span of TLC group activity it would be difficult to conclude that they learnt some long-lasting modern organisational and discursive skills. The basic breakthrough which any initiative requires consists in allowing people to have a sense o f ownership of the programme itself. Until now, their involvement has been passive and often like a guided tour. Thirdly, local officials always had the chance of institutionalising democratic participation but never wished to do so. The Indian Constitution provides that all citizens are equal, but the bureaucracy still continues to indulge itself in colonial attitudes, either through acts of benevolence (as in the case of Dumka) or arrogance (as in the case of Rohtak, Haryana) but both in an equally elitist
m anner. In Dumka, when the DC visits a tribal village, people feel happy because they still
consider him a ‘sovereign’, a ‘god-like’ person, whereas the DC treats the tribal adult
68
learners like ‘a new bom baby’ who ‘cannot be fed with an adult diet’ .
Though there have been marginal and momentary successes for the TLC in a few pockets of Bihar which could be attributed to particular strategies based on social issues, the point being made here is that the TLC, with its narrowly conceptualised preoccupation and half-heartedly enforced implementation, does not and can not institutionalise its professed democratic goals and the principles of a modern civil society. At best, as history of adult education in Bihar* shows, it has ‘made tremendous strides’ whenever charismatic and committed leaders or officials identified themselves with the programme and took a personal interest with a few selective strategies, but it has also failed because of a lack of a micro-level perspective and stringent regulations69. The question that arises is: should the progress of adult education be left to individual commitment as in case of Dumka, or some singular strategies as in case of Madhubani, Dhanbad and Madhepura? This incompleteness leaves adult learners with an unfinished journey in a fragile literacy culminating in ‘volunteer fatigue’, cynicism and isolation. Isn’t it desirable that committed officials should try to develop a multi-layered local leadership and expertise, and institutionalise a literacy
68 This was evident from the utterances o f tribals. The latter statement came from the DC o f Dumka in answer to a written questionnaire fdated 15.4.1995)
69 Shah, op.cit., 67-68
70
practice which is self-sustaining? The government, in its own legislative capacity, will have to bring in legislative reform providing for strict regulation and implementation of its schemes. It must, first, stipulate a change in the way the bureaucracy works, and then, provide a comprehensive conceptualisation, prioritizing its main concerns in clear terms. Otherwise, its concern for mass education and mass literacy will remain unfulfilled. These problems have also been noted by the government in reviewing its past experiences. The government accepts that adult education programmes have earlier failed for the following reasons:
(a) they are ‘not perceived as a felt need’; (b) adult literacy has not been ‘placed within a wider social context. The whole gamut of the development needs of the adult - of survival, employment, health, etc. - are not addressed. There is failure to realise that illiteracy is but a form of marginalisation or exclusion of those who are unable to secure for themselves minimum standards of well-being’; and (c) it has been generally ‘viewed more in the context of teaching methods and of learning to
71
read and write’ rather than as above (a) and (b) .
Even though the government is self-critical, the new strategies adopted (as in TLC) are shy of addressing these problems seriously because of vested local interests. In collusion with the dominant local groups (landlords, moneylenders, politicians), the government officials dominate the local tribal people and unless there is some stringent regulation for successful participation and institutionalization of public accountability, the local organisations as well as people are going to be dominated by these entrenched interests. The government has only two options for positive intervention. One is to provide all the necessary vocational and employment opportunities for the entire target group along with facilities for literacy training to support it. But it is unlikely to do so for lack of resources. The other option is to build on local resources by having stringent provisions for people’s participation and to allow local people to discuss, organise and create their own programme of literacy. This is a feasible strategy but it requires strict regulatory laws and community coordination, and this is the point at which the government balks. In order to make these programmes work, it would have to restructure its own machinery.
Though there now exists a government policy on adult education, it does not yet cater to an institutionalized practice of the values it formally acknowledges. There are structural impediments to a fully successful operation of TLC. The government has not provided autonomous space and power to those new structures which would carry out these goals. Instead, it has vested these additional responsibilities to the existing structures i.e. the
70 ibid. Also see Report o f the Expert Group - 1994 , 29-31. See sections 6.14 (ii), (iii), (iv) and (v) 71 Report o f The Committee For Review o f National Policy On Education 1986. Part - 1 (1990), 196
bureaucracy. One is not arguing here against national level planning or policies. We can agree with the need to have a broad national policy perspective for educational and literacy planning, but only on the condition that the specific needs of regions and groups, are given sufficient attention. What is more important for operational success is that, in a vast and diverse country with limited resources such as India, policies and programmes must be able to decentralize the powers of intervention. It must devolve to local bodies issues that might be better taken up by the local people. For example, as TLC provides for a separate, ‘independent and autonomous’ body at the district level called the Zila Saksharata Samiti (ZSS) all sections of the local community should be given ‘representation in the planning and implementation of programmes’ (see Appendix 1, section 2). But in practice the real and main powers remain in the hands of the Deputy Commissioner and the TLC officials in