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Education for Equality: Empowerment of
Migrating Rural Children
On using Education for Social Mobilization of the Rural Children migrating to the
Cities of India
Shanto Baksi
Email: shantob@gmail.com
August 5, 2014
Education for Equality
2
Abstract
The aim of this study is to find out and present a model of providing education to the migrant
working children coming from the villages to the cities of India in search of better livelihoods. It
also tries to understand why this migration is taking place from rural areas to urban areas in
India. The present paper is about three educational interventions among the children of such
migrant workers in three areas of India.
 1. West Bengal: the brickfield workers
 2. Odisha: the traditional fisher-people
 3. Gujarat: the salt pan / factory workers
The study takes a two way approach: -
 To find out how the migrating children can receive education despite their unusual
lifecycle of spending 12 months / year in at least two destinations: places where they
migrate and the place of their origin.
 The inputs that are introduced by the interventions and the outputs that are achieved: a
comparison of inputs (efforts) vis-a-vis outputs (results).
Keywords: Children; Migration, Education, Development;
Education for Equality
3
Contents
Sequence Headings Page Numbers
1. The Background and Objectives of the Study 04
2. The Interventions 10
3. Conclusion: Impacts and Learning 15
Impacts 15
Learning 16
4. Acknowledgements 18
5. References 19
6. Appendixes: 20
The methodology used to prepare the study 20
The budget for 1 Child Development Center (CDC) 21
Index of Tables
Serial Titles Page Numbers
1. The Journey: Migration from Rural areas to Cities 04
2. Different Learning Styles 12
3. Goals and Objectives of the courses 13
4. Timetable of a CDC 14
Education for Equality
4
The Background and Objectives of the Study
In India migration takes place for various reasons such as: -
 Work / Employment, Business, Education, Marriage, Moved at birth, Moved with family
and Others
The exodus from rural areas towards the big cities in India may be presented in this manner:
table – 1.
Table – 1: THE JOURNEY: MIGRATION FROM RURAL AREAS TO CITIES
The Core Issue The Process The Destination
The livelihood options are
better in the big cities; there is
also the attraction of city life
and, these together provide a
chance to make a difference
that pull people towards the
cities.
The migrations towards the
cities are not always planned
and in various circumstances
they cannot be planned;
migration for better life by
vulnerable people is mostly
unsafe.
The population which comes
to the big cities need to adapt
to situations and
circumstances which are not
always conducive to decent
life; hence the emergence and
existence of shanty towns and
slums.
Possible Reasons Consequences Possible Impacts over the
Lives of the People
Lack of sectorial / state
development plans / poor
implementation of sanctioned
rural and urban development
plans.
Circumstances like these are
very hard, create
destabilization / joblessness
and push people to accept any
and every job opportunity. In
most cases people end up in
When families go through
situations like these then
women and children suffer
most.
 Frustration / Alcohol
Education for Equality
5
 The development efforts
for underprivileged people
are not implemented
properly and consequently
people continue to stay
underdeveloped.
Note: - situations like war and
natural calamities also
contribute in people getting
displaced and coming towards
the cities in search of new
beginning in life.
exploitative situations.
 Unemployment or
underemployment
 Working for very low
wages for very long hours
for a very long time
 Doing things / work
unwillingly
 Unsafe migration ending
in trafficking
 Possibility of getting
involved with crime: in
many situations it has
been seen that people
with insecure future are
easy to be misled /
pursued for doing
improper activities.
addiction etc. for men
and often all the rights of
women and girls are
violated: domestic
violence
 Vagabond youth1
 Children do not go to or
dropout from schools
 Working as child labor2
 Girls getting married and
becoming pregnant
before 18 years of age,
consequently facing
many problems and
giving birth to premature
babies and many children
do not live beyond 5
years age3
.
1
In 2011 the Indian Penal Code [IPC]-recognized juvenile crimes increased by 10.5% over those of 2010: 22,740
IPC-recognized crimes by juveniles were registered during 2010 which increased to 25,125 cases in 2011. Major
Juvenile crimes came under the heads of ‗Theft‘ (21.17%), Hurt (16.3%) and Burglary (10.38%) in 2011.
2
Around the world, an estimated 215 million boys and girls aged 5–17 years were engaged in child labor in 2008,
115 million of them in hazardous work: report of International Labour Office.
3
Worldwide in the year 2010, 7.6 million children died before their fifth birthday and there were nearly 360,000
maternal deaths. Almost all child and maternal deaths occur in developing countries—a fifth of under-five deaths
and more than a quarter of neonatal deaths (deaths during the first month of life, which account for two-fifths of all
child deaths) occur in India alone.
Education for Equality
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The sections of the population that are in focus of this study are the children: migrating children.
The unorganized sector is a big chunk of the present Indian economy – employing about 90% of
the workers and generating about 50% of the Gross Domestic Product. A considerable part of
these workers are children.
Child labor is a global phenomenon. In India these are the areas / sectors where children are
mostly involved as labor, but there can be many other places and situations where a child is
being used as a labor.
 Cultivation, Agricultural Labor, Livestock, Forestry, Fishing, Plantation, Mining and
Quarrying, Manufacturing, Processing, Servicing and Repairs, Construction, Trade and
Commerce, Transport, Storage and Communication, and Other Services (child soldiers
and child sex-workers).
The trend of using children as workers is more evident among people / communities that are
vulnerable. A group of people / community becomes vulnerable because of various reasons: -
 The people that are illiterate
 The people are socially and culturally vulnerable / backward
 The people are traditionally engaged in occupations that have a high child labor
component
 The area is undeveloped: lack of infrastructure
 The people are economically poor
 The area is natural calamity prone
Education for Equality
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According to the Census of 2001 there are 1.26 crore [=12 million 60 thousand] working
children in the age group of 5-14 as compared to the total child population of 25.2 crore [=250
million 20 thousand]. There are approximately 12 lakhs [1.2 million] children working in the
hazardous occupations/processes [18 occupations and 65 processes] which are covered under the
Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act of India. However, as per survey conducted by
National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) in 2004-05, the number of working children is
estimated at 90.75 lakh. The number of working children has further gone down in NSSO
survey 2009-10 to 49.84 lakh4
.
The present paper is about three educational interventions among the children of migrant
workers and migrant child workers in three areas of India.
 1. West Bengal: the brickfield workers and their families come to West Bengal mainly
from the neighboring states of Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha. At their place
of origin these people mostly work as agricultural labor: the areas of their origin are not
very fertile consequently yield only a single crop in a year. Search for better income is
the main reason for migration. They spend six to eight months as seasonal workers. They
work as families / units. Their children do not go to school and, stay inside a lifelong loop
of vulnerability.
 2. Odisha: the traditional fisher-people: a community fighting for its survival in the face
of ongoing coastal area development and, declining supply of fish in the sea. They
migrate mostly within the state; some of them also go to Andhra Pradesh and
Maharashtra. In these places the fisher-people are not always able to stick to their main
occupation and are forced to do other odd jobs with low wages. These people are used to
doing fishing as a family unit. Here also the children hardly go to school, and when they
migrate the children hardly have any future.
4
http://labour.nic.in/content/faq/child-labour-faq.php
Education for Equality
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 3. Gujarat: the salt pan / factory workers and their children go through a similar type of
migration and social situation (like the brickfield workers in West Bengal), with only one
difference: they mostly migrate from places within Gujarat.
All of them seek opportunities to migrate to the cities, and will continue to do so until and unless
they get better opportunities of earning at their places of origin.
Individuals, institutions, and communities have their respective dreams: the rural people of India
today dream of becoming urban. It is this dream of the villagers which pushes them towards the
cities. They move towards the cities in search of a better life. The migration of people in search
of a better life is a part of the history of human evolution.
The old cities do not gladly welcome the rural people; the cities need them as workers but do not
like them as human beings. The incoming villagers remain misplaced and misfit in the cities for
a long time.
Very few of the migrants from the villages to the cities of India carry a lot of wealth, high culture
and social status with them. Most of them are very poor and uneducated people belonging to the
laboring castes and tribes of India.
The problems of brickfield workers, saltpan workers, and traditional fisher-people after
migration:
 Brickfield and saltpan: these manufacturing units are located in remote areas mostly away
from locality; therefore these migrant people don‘t get the chance of mixing with local
people. In India brick making and salt making are intensely manual labor oriented
industries: to make maximum profit owners use illiterate and underprivileged people who
are ready to work for very low wages for a very long time.
 In the case of traditional fisher-people the loss of their profession forced them to go for
work in other locations: within their state and sometimes outside of their states. These
Education for Equality
9
fishermen are engaged in this profession for generations and as a result of this these
people don‘t have any other skills besides fishing, consequently when they enter job
market as ―unskilled‖ labor and only get odd jobs / things that others (people of that
locality) are not doing willingly: garbage collectors, janitors (toilet cleaners), domestic
worker and etc.
Cultural, educational and intellectual wealth is easy to carry and easy to use and, it generates a
lot of power and status in our societies. The poor villages-to-cities migrants of India may have a
better chance of having a better future if they are educated before and during their migration.
The present generation of migrating brickfield workers, traditional fisher-people and salt pan
workers are unskilled. Education can make the next generation of these people semiskilled, and
from there the future generations may become such skilled workers who will have the knowledge
to think about and get their basic rights first as human beings and then as citizens of India.
This paper presents the story of three educational interventions within these three migrant rural
communities, and the impact of these interventions over the lives of these people especially
regarding the development of children.
Education for Equality
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The Interventions
All the featured interventions were started by Loreto Day School, Sealdah, Kolkata, West
Bengal, India.
The Brick Field Schools (BFS) project – The Brick Field Schools (BFS) project is for the
children of migrant brickfield workers. These children do not get any opportunities regarding
education – this project is all about providing education to them. The majority of these children
do not speak Bengali, and in West Bengal the medium of education / instruction in the
Government schools is mainly Bengali. So there is no point in admitting these children in those
schools; thus the intervention logic used for BFS is “Let’s bring the schools to the children”, and
seasonal schools were opened inside the brickfields. The medium of instruction is Hindi.
Teaching in mother tongue is best for all the children; however, in the rural areas of West Bengal
teachers who can teach in languages like Bhojpuri, Mundari, Santhali, Oriyaand Chhattisgarhi
are difficult to find. All the children speak and understand Hindi, so we decided to teach in
Hindi.
The Salt Pan Schools (SPS) project – It‘s an intervention like the BFS; with only one difference
since it‘s migration within Gujarat all the children speak the same language (different dialects of
Guajarati). The medium of instruction is Gujarati.
The Schools for Children of Fisher-people in Odisha – This intervention was for the
communities of traditional fisher-people. These people mostly don‘t migrate along with their
families, the section of population that stays back are mostly women and children. These
children are mostly out of school due to lack of good habits and discipline: no one is inspiring
them to go to school. Most of them get admitted in local Government schools, but lack of
support and guidance from home pushes them towards becoming dropouts. This project was
planned to mainstream the children and also to retain them in schools. To achieve this objective
educational support centers were opened in the coastal villages. The medium of instruction the
government schools and educational support centers is Odiya.
Education for Equality
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The schools inside brickfields in West Bengal and saltpans in Gujarat, and the education centers
in the coastal villages of Odisha have a similar kind of structure, and they can be called Child
Development Centers (CDC).
 The work of brick and salt making are seasonal: work starts from November and ends in
June, thus the CDCs for these children also run for 8 months. The CDC in coastal villages
of Odisha runs for 12 months since the children don‘t migrate and mostly stay in one
place.
Majority of the children coming to CDCs are first generation learners or their parents have some
level of illiteracy. They don‘t have the habit of studying, and beside this the projects also faced a
problem of dealing with the lifestyle of these children.
 Education must be fun, otherwise children will lose interest. The underprivileged children
are very smart because they have to survive in a cruel world, where no one is going treat
them as children: these circumstances lead to situations where these children create ways
to make themselves happy. Now our curricula and teaching methods must be more
interesting in comparison with the activities and objects that these children use to make
themselves happy. If their own world is more attractive, then they will not come to the
educational efforts such as the educational centers that are made for them.
Time is another constraint: these children understand the value of time in their own way and like
to learn things faster than average school going children. To teach things faster in a short span of
time, a teacher needs to understand the preferred learning style of the learner. It is the job of the
teachers to find that out for each child.
A list of few learning styles are given below, this will give the teachers an idea about different
learning styles. It will also help them to understand the needs of different children: Table – 2.
Education for Equality
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Table – 2: DIFFERENT LEARNING STYLES
Naturalistic It‘s for those children who like and respect nature and are interested in
subjects like evolution and the environment
Linguistic It‘s for those children who are good with words, who like to write and
read a lot
Intra-Personal /
Reflective
It‘s for those children who are good at self-analysis and reflection,
drawing conclusions from their own experience, setting goals and
making plans
Interpersonal It‘s for those children who are good at persuading and selling or at
teaching others and who can read other people's moods well
Body oriented /
Physical
It‘s for those children who are good at sport, dance, and handicrafts
Musical It‘s for those children who are good at music and rhyme, and who
have a natural sense of rhythm
Mathematical / Logical It‘s for those children who are good with numbers and, appreciate
step-by-step, intuitive and logical explanations
Visual / Spatial It‘s for those children who are good at art, visualizing, and navigating
The Course Layout: the courses try to provide a compact package of education for these children,
containing basic literacy, numeracy, creative and physical skills, and general awareness related
materials, which will empower the children with some knowledge and skills.
1. Literacy – ability to read and write one‘s own name in Hindi/mother tongue and also the
ability handle small sentences
2. Numeracy – ability to count and to do addition-multiplication and subtraction-division in
Hindi / mother tongue
3. General Awareness‘ – about health and hygiene, nature and culture in Hindi / mother
tongue
4. Creative and Physical Skills – ability to express oneself through stories, songs, dance,
drawing and painting, clay modeling and, to take part in sports and games.
Education for Equality
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To achieve the results 2 methods were used: -
 Lesson plan – to have better control and effective learning in the sites of learning (not
always a classroom often an open space)
 Management of the Class– in many places teachers are required to teach children of
different age groups with different levels inside one class in an open space
The children coming to these CDCs are in the age group of 4 to 14 years, but majority of the
children are between 6 to 12 years, and they were divided into 3 groups according to their age,
up to 6 years of age, from 7 to 10 years, and children that are above 10 years of age.
All the teachers appointed in CDCs received induction training and periodic training during the
implementation process. The goals and objectives of the course are given below in table – 3.
Table – 3: GOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE COURSES
1 – Language
Skills
Ability to Understand The child who will complete the course and the
child will have basic command over mother
tongue / Hindi
Ability to Speak
Ability to Read
Ability to Write
2 – Number
Skills
Ability to do Addition -
Multiplication
The child who will complete the course and the
child will have basic command over numbers
related activitiesAbility to do Subtraction -
Division
3 – General
Awareness‘
Knowledge about Health
and Hygiene, Nature and
Culture
The child, who will complete the course, will
have some basic orientations about health and
hygiene related issues and, about the
surrounding nature and culture
4 - Creative and
Physical Skills
To have fun and
enjoyment about learning
This will help the children become self-
motivated and take creative interest in the CDC
Education for Equality
14
The daily time schedule of 30 minutes x 6 periods = 3 hours for a CDC was designed to support
the different learning styles / needs of different children: table – 4.
Table – 4: TIMETABLE OF CDC
Improvement
of Language
Skills
Improvement
of Number
Skills
Improvement
of Creative
Skills
Improvement
of General
Awareness‘
Improvement
of Physical
Skills
Tiffin / Food
0:30min 0:30min 0:30min 0:30min 0:30min 0:30min
These 3 interventions were implemented through local partner organizations; this was done as
part of providing sustainability to these efforts. It generated employment at the local level.
 Whenever a project is implemented by local people close to the target beneficiaries the
project is more sustainable in comparison with projects that are totally implemented by
outsiders / technical people. As of May 2014 all these interventions are running for the
development of underprivileged Indian children.
Education for Equality
15
Conclusion: Impacts and Learning
The conclusion is divided into 2 parts the impacts that‘s been made by these 3 interventions, and
the learning from these interventions.
Impacts: brickfields and saltpans - these words are not associated with the term ―Education‖ and
using these places to run educational development related projects itself created an impact in the
nearby localities. The simple approach of these 2 interventions made it possible to reach the
primary goal of migrating people coming back to work in the same brickfields and saltpans just
because they wanted to access the services of the CDCs running inside these places for educating
their children.
 On an average 30% to 70% people come back to the same brickfield and saltpan, the
number oscillates because the migrant workers don‘t have any choice about where they
will go for work: wherever the income is more they go to that place / region of India
(mostly a group of people travel between 3 / 4 nearby sites/states).
 After 3 years of intervention in one brickfield and saltpan, we have found that the number
of people that are coming back to the same place is more than 50% and the reason is this
that a CDCs is running in that place.
The CDCs inside brickfields and saltpans are a kind of assistance to these migrant workers, their
children are in one place for 3 / 4 hours for 5 days a week, this helped the adults to focus on their
work without worrying about children being lost / injured. They are more focused and as result
they are earning more, consequently production also increased and the owners are also happy. In
the beginning the owners of brickfields and saltpans were not too keen about allowing NGOs to
open CDCs inside their working areas, but increase in production changed their mindset and
some of them even made some contribution towards the expenses related to running of a CDC.
Education for Equality
16
The most important impact is this that the children are happy to learn and they come every day
and even requests the teachers to come on the weekends too: these CDCs are the only window of
opportunity for them to be connected with the larger WORLD outside of their own world.
The schools for children of fisher-people were kind of easy intervention in comparison with the
interventions in the brickfields and saltpans. The intervention was inside a village and the
children were from that village and there were no obstacles in the way of reaching the children.
The impact can be simply shown by the numbers: the project was planned to admit 1,000
children from these communities into schools within a time period of 18 months – within 10
months 1,329 were admitted into schools.
Learning: Any person less than 18 years in age is a child, and there are lot of children who are
working inside brickfields and saltpans: we can fight with the owners and make complaints
against them for using children and their self-defense is this that they don‘t give contracts to
children, they offer contracts to the men/heads of families and if they use their wife and children
in completing the contract then that is not the employer‘s fault, but most importantly if we insist
on this line of protest then the owners will immediately close the CDCs, and the children will
miss out on the chance of receiving education. This will also be on-behalf-ism on our part. The
migrant workers and their children will remain passive about their rights.
 We realized that a movement against the exploitation must come from within the people
that are suffering: the outsiders can only facilitate the process of social change. Here the
educational approach is the best approach for creating rights awareness.
In the case of fishermen‘s children it‘s simply building habits of families to prepare their
children for school, and it was possible to do that because the teachers were from the same
village and whenever a child didn‘t go to school they immediately visited that house to know
why the child is not going to school, and offered their help to tackle the situation that was
preventing the child from going to school.
Education for Equality
17
The teachers became the ambassadors of change whether it‘s in the brickfields of West Bengal,
saltpans of Gujarat or in the coastal villages of Odisha. The most important component of these
educational developmental projects is inspiring the children to expand their horizons and it‘s
been done through the teachers who bring information about different things and present them in
way that children are happy to learn and to come to school.
 To change the life cycle of these vulnerable people we need to invest in education, and to
sustain it funding is only needed for teacher‘s salary: to run these CDC that‘s the only
thing which is required. The other stakeholders – the community and the employers
provide the space. The government departments supply some of the books. The teachers
and the students create the study materials and texts according to their need.
Education for Equality
18
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Loreto Day School, Sealdah, Kolkata, West Bengal, India the partner
organization for the centers in different parts of India; for providing me with the opportunity to
participate in education facilitating activities among the children of brick field workers of West
Bengal, fisher-people of Odisha and, salt pan / factory workers of Gujarat. I have learned more
from these migrating people and it is they who made me a better person and a better social
worker for some people in need.
 Brick Fields: Amalendu Smriti Niketan, Koikala Chetana, Teacher‘s Group, Naihati
Prolife, Towards Future and Progressive Rural Active Youth‘s Action for Society
 Saltpans: Swaman Trust
 Villages of the Coastal Fisher-People: Orissa Traditional Fish Workers‘ Union and Utkal
Vani Hostel and Cultural Center
Education for Equality
19
References
Reports generated by my first-hand experience of Project Cycle Management through research,
implementation, monitoring, evaluation and documentation of the corresponding educational
projects at West Bengal, Odisha and Gujarat, as an employee of the Loreto Day School, Sealdah.
Internal reports about the intervention in brickfields, saltpans and villages of the coastal fisher-
people, beside that:
Bandyopadhyay, U. and Baksi, S. (2009). Easy Methods of Teaching Language and
Mathematics. Kolkata: available at Scribd (URL: www.scribd.com) and Academia (URL:
www.academia.edu).
Education for Equality
20
Appendixes
1) The methodology used to prepare the study: a three way approach of information collection: -
 Individual interviews and FGD (focus group discussion) with children, women and men:
the total sample size is 135 persons (77 children: 47 girls and 30 boys, 33 women and 25
men).
1. In West Bengal 54 persons (32 children: 20 girls and 12 boys, 15 women and 7
men) at the place of migration
2. In Odisha 43 persons (25 children: 15 girls and 10 boys, 10 women and 8 men) at
the place of their origin
3. In Gujarat 38 persons (20 children: 12 girls and 8 boys, 8 women and 10 men) at
the place of migration
 Interactions with other stakeholders who are associated with the lives of migrant people
at the destination sites / where they come for work, in West Bengal and Gujarat, and at
the source sites / from where they migrate, in Odisha.
 Observations: an anthropological observer approach of information collection: by not
asking direct question and just spending time with them to know about their lives in the
villages, the process of migration and life after migration.
Education for Equality
21
2) The budget: to start a CDC the expenses is per child less than Rs. 5 00.00 per month. The
usual teacher: student ratio is 1 teacher for 25 students. Thus a CDC in brickfields and saltpans
with 2 teachers for 50 children need Rs. 25,000.00 per month and for 8 months / one season it‘s
Rs. 200,000.00, and it is Rs. 300,000.00 in the villages of the coastal fisher-people, where the
center runs for 12 months.
 Rs. 500.00 per child includes expenditure on these budget heads: Study Materials for the
Children, Honorarium of Teachers, Travel Expenses of Teachers for Training,
Administrative Costs and portions of Salaries of Project Coordinator and Accountant.
This amount of Rs. 25,000.00 per month is needed for first 2 / 3 years, and after that the project
can sustain with only the Honorarium of Teachers Rs. 4,000.00 per month for 1 teacher.

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Education for equality

  • 1. Education for Equality: Empowerment of Migrating Rural Children On using Education for Social Mobilization of the Rural Children migrating to the Cities of India Shanto Baksi Email: shantob@gmail.com August 5, 2014
  • 2. Education for Equality 2 Abstract The aim of this study is to find out and present a model of providing education to the migrant working children coming from the villages to the cities of India in search of better livelihoods. It also tries to understand why this migration is taking place from rural areas to urban areas in India. The present paper is about three educational interventions among the children of such migrant workers in three areas of India.  1. West Bengal: the brickfield workers  2. Odisha: the traditional fisher-people  3. Gujarat: the salt pan / factory workers The study takes a two way approach: -  To find out how the migrating children can receive education despite their unusual lifecycle of spending 12 months / year in at least two destinations: places where they migrate and the place of their origin.  The inputs that are introduced by the interventions and the outputs that are achieved: a comparison of inputs (efforts) vis-a-vis outputs (results). Keywords: Children; Migration, Education, Development;
  • 3. Education for Equality 3 Contents Sequence Headings Page Numbers 1. The Background and Objectives of the Study 04 2. The Interventions 10 3. Conclusion: Impacts and Learning 15 Impacts 15 Learning 16 4. Acknowledgements 18 5. References 19 6. Appendixes: 20 The methodology used to prepare the study 20 The budget for 1 Child Development Center (CDC) 21 Index of Tables Serial Titles Page Numbers 1. The Journey: Migration from Rural areas to Cities 04 2. Different Learning Styles 12 3. Goals and Objectives of the courses 13 4. Timetable of a CDC 14
  • 4. Education for Equality 4 The Background and Objectives of the Study In India migration takes place for various reasons such as: -  Work / Employment, Business, Education, Marriage, Moved at birth, Moved with family and Others The exodus from rural areas towards the big cities in India may be presented in this manner: table – 1. Table – 1: THE JOURNEY: MIGRATION FROM RURAL AREAS TO CITIES The Core Issue The Process The Destination The livelihood options are better in the big cities; there is also the attraction of city life and, these together provide a chance to make a difference that pull people towards the cities. The migrations towards the cities are not always planned and in various circumstances they cannot be planned; migration for better life by vulnerable people is mostly unsafe. The population which comes to the big cities need to adapt to situations and circumstances which are not always conducive to decent life; hence the emergence and existence of shanty towns and slums. Possible Reasons Consequences Possible Impacts over the Lives of the People Lack of sectorial / state development plans / poor implementation of sanctioned rural and urban development plans. Circumstances like these are very hard, create destabilization / joblessness and push people to accept any and every job opportunity. In most cases people end up in When families go through situations like these then women and children suffer most.  Frustration / Alcohol
  • 5. Education for Equality 5  The development efforts for underprivileged people are not implemented properly and consequently people continue to stay underdeveloped. Note: - situations like war and natural calamities also contribute in people getting displaced and coming towards the cities in search of new beginning in life. exploitative situations.  Unemployment or underemployment  Working for very low wages for very long hours for a very long time  Doing things / work unwillingly  Unsafe migration ending in trafficking  Possibility of getting involved with crime: in many situations it has been seen that people with insecure future are easy to be misled / pursued for doing improper activities. addiction etc. for men and often all the rights of women and girls are violated: domestic violence  Vagabond youth1  Children do not go to or dropout from schools  Working as child labor2  Girls getting married and becoming pregnant before 18 years of age, consequently facing many problems and giving birth to premature babies and many children do not live beyond 5 years age3 . 1 In 2011 the Indian Penal Code [IPC]-recognized juvenile crimes increased by 10.5% over those of 2010: 22,740 IPC-recognized crimes by juveniles were registered during 2010 which increased to 25,125 cases in 2011. Major Juvenile crimes came under the heads of ‗Theft‘ (21.17%), Hurt (16.3%) and Burglary (10.38%) in 2011. 2 Around the world, an estimated 215 million boys and girls aged 5–17 years were engaged in child labor in 2008, 115 million of them in hazardous work: report of International Labour Office. 3 Worldwide in the year 2010, 7.6 million children died before their fifth birthday and there were nearly 360,000 maternal deaths. Almost all child and maternal deaths occur in developing countries—a fifth of under-five deaths and more than a quarter of neonatal deaths (deaths during the first month of life, which account for two-fifths of all child deaths) occur in India alone.
  • 6. Education for Equality 6 The sections of the population that are in focus of this study are the children: migrating children. The unorganized sector is a big chunk of the present Indian economy – employing about 90% of the workers and generating about 50% of the Gross Domestic Product. A considerable part of these workers are children. Child labor is a global phenomenon. In India these are the areas / sectors where children are mostly involved as labor, but there can be many other places and situations where a child is being used as a labor.  Cultivation, Agricultural Labor, Livestock, Forestry, Fishing, Plantation, Mining and Quarrying, Manufacturing, Processing, Servicing and Repairs, Construction, Trade and Commerce, Transport, Storage and Communication, and Other Services (child soldiers and child sex-workers). The trend of using children as workers is more evident among people / communities that are vulnerable. A group of people / community becomes vulnerable because of various reasons: -  The people that are illiterate  The people are socially and culturally vulnerable / backward  The people are traditionally engaged in occupations that have a high child labor component  The area is undeveloped: lack of infrastructure  The people are economically poor  The area is natural calamity prone
  • 7. Education for Equality 7 According to the Census of 2001 there are 1.26 crore [=12 million 60 thousand] working children in the age group of 5-14 as compared to the total child population of 25.2 crore [=250 million 20 thousand]. There are approximately 12 lakhs [1.2 million] children working in the hazardous occupations/processes [18 occupations and 65 processes] which are covered under the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act of India. However, as per survey conducted by National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) in 2004-05, the number of working children is estimated at 90.75 lakh. The number of working children has further gone down in NSSO survey 2009-10 to 49.84 lakh4 . The present paper is about three educational interventions among the children of migrant workers and migrant child workers in three areas of India.  1. West Bengal: the brickfield workers and their families come to West Bengal mainly from the neighboring states of Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha. At their place of origin these people mostly work as agricultural labor: the areas of their origin are not very fertile consequently yield only a single crop in a year. Search for better income is the main reason for migration. They spend six to eight months as seasonal workers. They work as families / units. Their children do not go to school and, stay inside a lifelong loop of vulnerability.  2. Odisha: the traditional fisher-people: a community fighting for its survival in the face of ongoing coastal area development and, declining supply of fish in the sea. They migrate mostly within the state; some of them also go to Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. In these places the fisher-people are not always able to stick to their main occupation and are forced to do other odd jobs with low wages. These people are used to doing fishing as a family unit. Here also the children hardly go to school, and when they migrate the children hardly have any future. 4 http://labour.nic.in/content/faq/child-labour-faq.php
  • 8. Education for Equality 8  3. Gujarat: the salt pan / factory workers and their children go through a similar type of migration and social situation (like the brickfield workers in West Bengal), with only one difference: they mostly migrate from places within Gujarat. All of them seek opportunities to migrate to the cities, and will continue to do so until and unless they get better opportunities of earning at their places of origin. Individuals, institutions, and communities have their respective dreams: the rural people of India today dream of becoming urban. It is this dream of the villagers which pushes them towards the cities. They move towards the cities in search of a better life. The migration of people in search of a better life is a part of the history of human evolution. The old cities do not gladly welcome the rural people; the cities need them as workers but do not like them as human beings. The incoming villagers remain misplaced and misfit in the cities for a long time. Very few of the migrants from the villages to the cities of India carry a lot of wealth, high culture and social status with them. Most of them are very poor and uneducated people belonging to the laboring castes and tribes of India. The problems of brickfield workers, saltpan workers, and traditional fisher-people after migration:  Brickfield and saltpan: these manufacturing units are located in remote areas mostly away from locality; therefore these migrant people don‘t get the chance of mixing with local people. In India brick making and salt making are intensely manual labor oriented industries: to make maximum profit owners use illiterate and underprivileged people who are ready to work for very low wages for a very long time.  In the case of traditional fisher-people the loss of their profession forced them to go for work in other locations: within their state and sometimes outside of their states. These
  • 9. Education for Equality 9 fishermen are engaged in this profession for generations and as a result of this these people don‘t have any other skills besides fishing, consequently when they enter job market as ―unskilled‖ labor and only get odd jobs / things that others (people of that locality) are not doing willingly: garbage collectors, janitors (toilet cleaners), domestic worker and etc. Cultural, educational and intellectual wealth is easy to carry and easy to use and, it generates a lot of power and status in our societies. The poor villages-to-cities migrants of India may have a better chance of having a better future if they are educated before and during their migration. The present generation of migrating brickfield workers, traditional fisher-people and salt pan workers are unskilled. Education can make the next generation of these people semiskilled, and from there the future generations may become such skilled workers who will have the knowledge to think about and get their basic rights first as human beings and then as citizens of India. This paper presents the story of three educational interventions within these three migrant rural communities, and the impact of these interventions over the lives of these people especially regarding the development of children.
  • 10. Education for Equality 10 The Interventions All the featured interventions were started by Loreto Day School, Sealdah, Kolkata, West Bengal, India. The Brick Field Schools (BFS) project – The Brick Field Schools (BFS) project is for the children of migrant brickfield workers. These children do not get any opportunities regarding education – this project is all about providing education to them. The majority of these children do not speak Bengali, and in West Bengal the medium of education / instruction in the Government schools is mainly Bengali. So there is no point in admitting these children in those schools; thus the intervention logic used for BFS is “Let’s bring the schools to the children”, and seasonal schools were opened inside the brickfields. The medium of instruction is Hindi. Teaching in mother tongue is best for all the children; however, in the rural areas of West Bengal teachers who can teach in languages like Bhojpuri, Mundari, Santhali, Oriyaand Chhattisgarhi are difficult to find. All the children speak and understand Hindi, so we decided to teach in Hindi. The Salt Pan Schools (SPS) project – It‘s an intervention like the BFS; with only one difference since it‘s migration within Gujarat all the children speak the same language (different dialects of Guajarati). The medium of instruction is Gujarati. The Schools for Children of Fisher-people in Odisha – This intervention was for the communities of traditional fisher-people. These people mostly don‘t migrate along with their families, the section of population that stays back are mostly women and children. These children are mostly out of school due to lack of good habits and discipline: no one is inspiring them to go to school. Most of them get admitted in local Government schools, but lack of support and guidance from home pushes them towards becoming dropouts. This project was planned to mainstream the children and also to retain them in schools. To achieve this objective educational support centers were opened in the coastal villages. The medium of instruction the government schools and educational support centers is Odiya.
  • 11. Education for Equality 11 The schools inside brickfields in West Bengal and saltpans in Gujarat, and the education centers in the coastal villages of Odisha have a similar kind of structure, and they can be called Child Development Centers (CDC).  The work of brick and salt making are seasonal: work starts from November and ends in June, thus the CDCs for these children also run for 8 months. The CDC in coastal villages of Odisha runs for 12 months since the children don‘t migrate and mostly stay in one place. Majority of the children coming to CDCs are first generation learners or their parents have some level of illiteracy. They don‘t have the habit of studying, and beside this the projects also faced a problem of dealing with the lifestyle of these children.  Education must be fun, otherwise children will lose interest. The underprivileged children are very smart because they have to survive in a cruel world, where no one is going treat them as children: these circumstances lead to situations where these children create ways to make themselves happy. Now our curricula and teaching methods must be more interesting in comparison with the activities and objects that these children use to make themselves happy. If their own world is more attractive, then they will not come to the educational efforts such as the educational centers that are made for them. Time is another constraint: these children understand the value of time in their own way and like to learn things faster than average school going children. To teach things faster in a short span of time, a teacher needs to understand the preferred learning style of the learner. It is the job of the teachers to find that out for each child. A list of few learning styles are given below, this will give the teachers an idea about different learning styles. It will also help them to understand the needs of different children: Table – 2.
  • 12. Education for Equality 12 Table – 2: DIFFERENT LEARNING STYLES Naturalistic It‘s for those children who like and respect nature and are interested in subjects like evolution and the environment Linguistic It‘s for those children who are good with words, who like to write and read a lot Intra-Personal / Reflective It‘s for those children who are good at self-analysis and reflection, drawing conclusions from their own experience, setting goals and making plans Interpersonal It‘s for those children who are good at persuading and selling or at teaching others and who can read other people's moods well Body oriented / Physical It‘s for those children who are good at sport, dance, and handicrafts Musical It‘s for those children who are good at music and rhyme, and who have a natural sense of rhythm Mathematical / Logical It‘s for those children who are good with numbers and, appreciate step-by-step, intuitive and logical explanations Visual / Spatial It‘s for those children who are good at art, visualizing, and navigating The Course Layout: the courses try to provide a compact package of education for these children, containing basic literacy, numeracy, creative and physical skills, and general awareness related materials, which will empower the children with some knowledge and skills. 1. Literacy – ability to read and write one‘s own name in Hindi/mother tongue and also the ability handle small sentences 2. Numeracy – ability to count and to do addition-multiplication and subtraction-division in Hindi / mother tongue 3. General Awareness‘ – about health and hygiene, nature and culture in Hindi / mother tongue 4. Creative and Physical Skills – ability to express oneself through stories, songs, dance, drawing and painting, clay modeling and, to take part in sports and games.
  • 13. Education for Equality 13 To achieve the results 2 methods were used: -  Lesson plan – to have better control and effective learning in the sites of learning (not always a classroom often an open space)  Management of the Class– in many places teachers are required to teach children of different age groups with different levels inside one class in an open space The children coming to these CDCs are in the age group of 4 to 14 years, but majority of the children are between 6 to 12 years, and they were divided into 3 groups according to their age, up to 6 years of age, from 7 to 10 years, and children that are above 10 years of age. All the teachers appointed in CDCs received induction training and periodic training during the implementation process. The goals and objectives of the course are given below in table – 3. Table – 3: GOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE COURSES 1 – Language Skills Ability to Understand The child who will complete the course and the child will have basic command over mother tongue / Hindi Ability to Speak Ability to Read Ability to Write 2 – Number Skills Ability to do Addition - Multiplication The child who will complete the course and the child will have basic command over numbers related activitiesAbility to do Subtraction - Division 3 – General Awareness‘ Knowledge about Health and Hygiene, Nature and Culture The child, who will complete the course, will have some basic orientations about health and hygiene related issues and, about the surrounding nature and culture 4 - Creative and Physical Skills To have fun and enjoyment about learning This will help the children become self- motivated and take creative interest in the CDC
  • 14. Education for Equality 14 The daily time schedule of 30 minutes x 6 periods = 3 hours for a CDC was designed to support the different learning styles / needs of different children: table – 4. Table – 4: TIMETABLE OF CDC Improvement of Language Skills Improvement of Number Skills Improvement of Creative Skills Improvement of General Awareness‘ Improvement of Physical Skills Tiffin / Food 0:30min 0:30min 0:30min 0:30min 0:30min 0:30min These 3 interventions were implemented through local partner organizations; this was done as part of providing sustainability to these efforts. It generated employment at the local level.  Whenever a project is implemented by local people close to the target beneficiaries the project is more sustainable in comparison with projects that are totally implemented by outsiders / technical people. As of May 2014 all these interventions are running for the development of underprivileged Indian children.
  • 15. Education for Equality 15 Conclusion: Impacts and Learning The conclusion is divided into 2 parts the impacts that‘s been made by these 3 interventions, and the learning from these interventions. Impacts: brickfields and saltpans - these words are not associated with the term ―Education‖ and using these places to run educational development related projects itself created an impact in the nearby localities. The simple approach of these 2 interventions made it possible to reach the primary goal of migrating people coming back to work in the same brickfields and saltpans just because they wanted to access the services of the CDCs running inside these places for educating their children.  On an average 30% to 70% people come back to the same brickfield and saltpan, the number oscillates because the migrant workers don‘t have any choice about where they will go for work: wherever the income is more they go to that place / region of India (mostly a group of people travel between 3 / 4 nearby sites/states).  After 3 years of intervention in one brickfield and saltpan, we have found that the number of people that are coming back to the same place is more than 50% and the reason is this that a CDCs is running in that place. The CDCs inside brickfields and saltpans are a kind of assistance to these migrant workers, their children are in one place for 3 / 4 hours for 5 days a week, this helped the adults to focus on their work without worrying about children being lost / injured. They are more focused and as result they are earning more, consequently production also increased and the owners are also happy. In the beginning the owners of brickfields and saltpans were not too keen about allowing NGOs to open CDCs inside their working areas, but increase in production changed their mindset and some of them even made some contribution towards the expenses related to running of a CDC.
  • 16. Education for Equality 16 The most important impact is this that the children are happy to learn and they come every day and even requests the teachers to come on the weekends too: these CDCs are the only window of opportunity for them to be connected with the larger WORLD outside of their own world. The schools for children of fisher-people were kind of easy intervention in comparison with the interventions in the brickfields and saltpans. The intervention was inside a village and the children were from that village and there were no obstacles in the way of reaching the children. The impact can be simply shown by the numbers: the project was planned to admit 1,000 children from these communities into schools within a time period of 18 months – within 10 months 1,329 were admitted into schools. Learning: Any person less than 18 years in age is a child, and there are lot of children who are working inside brickfields and saltpans: we can fight with the owners and make complaints against them for using children and their self-defense is this that they don‘t give contracts to children, they offer contracts to the men/heads of families and if they use their wife and children in completing the contract then that is not the employer‘s fault, but most importantly if we insist on this line of protest then the owners will immediately close the CDCs, and the children will miss out on the chance of receiving education. This will also be on-behalf-ism on our part. The migrant workers and their children will remain passive about their rights.  We realized that a movement against the exploitation must come from within the people that are suffering: the outsiders can only facilitate the process of social change. Here the educational approach is the best approach for creating rights awareness. In the case of fishermen‘s children it‘s simply building habits of families to prepare their children for school, and it was possible to do that because the teachers were from the same village and whenever a child didn‘t go to school they immediately visited that house to know why the child is not going to school, and offered their help to tackle the situation that was preventing the child from going to school.
  • 17. Education for Equality 17 The teachers became the ambassadors of change whether it‘s in the brickfields of West Bengal, saltpans of Gujarat or in the coastal villages of Odisha. The most important component of these educational developmental projects is inspiring the children to expand their horizons and it‘s been done through the teachers who bring information about different things and present them in way that children are happy to learn and to come to school.  To change the life cycle of these vulnerable people we need to invest in education, and to sustain it funding is only needed for teacher‘s salary: to run these CDC that‘s the only thing which is required. The other stakeholders – the community and the employers provide the space. The government departments supply some of the books. The teachers and the students create the study materials and texts according to their need.
  • 18. Education for Equality 18 Acknowledgements I am grateful to the Loreto Day School, Sealdah, Kolkata, West Bengal, India the partner organization for the centers in different parts of India; for providing me with the opportunity to participate in education facilitating activities among the children of brick field workers of West Bengal, fisher-people of Odisha and, salt pan / factory workers of Gujarat. I have learned more from these migrating people and it is they who made me a better person and a better social worker for some people in need.  Brick Fields: Amalendu Smriti Niketan, Koikala Chetana, Teacher‘s Group, Naihati Prolife, Towards Future and Progressive Rural Active Youth‘s Action for Society  Saltpans: Swaman Trust  Villages of the Coastal Fisher-People: Orissa Traditional Fish Workers‘ Union and Utkal Vani Hostel and Cultural Center
  • 19. Education for Equality 19 References Reports generated by my first-hand experience of Project Cycle Management through research, implementation, monitoring, evaluation and documentation of the corresponding educational projects at West Bengal, Odisha and Gujarat, as an employee of the Loreto Day School, Sealdah. Internal reports about the intervention in brickfields, saltpans and villages of the coastal fisher- people, beside that: Bandyopadhyay, U. and Baksi, S. (2009). Easy Methods of Teaching Language and Mathematics. Kolkata: available at Scribd (URL: www.scribd.com) and Academia (URL: www.academia.edu).
  • 20. Education for Equality 20 Appendixes 1) The methodology used to prepare the study: a three way approach of information collection: -  Individual interviews and FGD (focus group discussion) with children, women and men: the total sample size is 135 persons (77 children: 47 girls and 30 boys, 33 women and 25 men). 1. In West Bengal 54 persons (32 children: 20 girls and 12 boys, 15 women and 7 men) at the place of migration 2. In Odisha 43 persons (25 children: 15 girls and 10 boys, 10 women and 8 men) at the place of their origin 3. In Gujarat 38 persons (20 children: 12 girls and 8 boys, 8 women and 10 men) at the place of migration  Interactions with other stakeholders who are associated with the lives of migrant people at the destination sites / where they come for work, in West Bengal and Gujarat, and at the source sites / from where they migrate, in Odisha.  Observations: an anthropological observer approach of information collection: by not asking direct question and just spending time with them to know about their lives in the villages, the process of migration and life after migration.
  • 21. Education for Equality 21 2) The budget: to start a CDC the expenses is per child less than Rs. 5 00.00 per month. The usual teacher: student ratio is 1 teacher for 25 students. Thus a CDC in brickfields and saltpans with 2 teachers for 50 children need Rs. 25,000.00 per month and for 8 months / one season it‘s Rs. 200,000.00, and it is Rs. 300,000.00 in the villages of the coastal fisher-people, where the center runs for 12 months.  Rs. 500.00 per child includes expenditure on these budget heads: Study Materials for the Children, Honorarium of Teachers, Travel Expenses of Teachers for Training, Administrative Costs and portions of Salaries of Project Coordinator and Accountant. This amount of Rs. 25,000.00 per month is needed for first 2 / 3 years, and after that the project can sustain with only the Honorarium of Teachers Rs. 4,000.00 per month for 1 teacher.