NAGPUR: Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke on Wednesday alleged that tribal schools in India had faced government apathy for the past 80 years and announced that his group would launch its ‘Adivasi School Thik Karo’ campaign in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, from September 17.Dipke said the campaign aims to draw the government’s attention to the problems and discrimination faced by tribal students.A month ago, the CJP launched ‘School Thik Karo’ (Fix the Schools), a nationwide campaign aimed at improving the condition of public schools in rural and urban areas.“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, ” Dipke told news agency PTI.“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 greater focus on students and schools in tribal areas, saying they have significant 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 all 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 have died in Maharashtra over the past 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 created a furore across the country,” he said.More than 30 tribal students died in Balaghat, a tribal belt in Madhya Pradesh, over the past two months. Deaths of tribal students were also reported 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 were given, he claimed.Dipke also raised concerns over Eklavya Modern Residential Schools, alleging that 477 of the 720 such 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.(With agency inputs)
