INTRODUCTION:

Education plays an important role to gain the developmental status in individual’s life. Education is learning, knowing and exploring, it bring individuals life from darkness and backwardness towards the light of the knowledge. Therefore education plays an essential and important role for the development of every society and nation. It can also said that an education is the key of economic development and it can be said that it is an very important tool for any individual person in the society to understand the social system in positive point of view and to get adapted him or herself accordingly. Since from the independence there are many developmental plans and strategies are made to improve the educational status of backward tribes as they poses extremely low level of literacy and unaware about the development.

While talking about the particularly vulnerable tribal group (PVTG) Birhor living in the remote and inaccessible areas of the Chhattisgarh state. Birhors are living with primitive technology of agricultural practice, lowest literacy rates, unawareness, and widespread poverty with miserable picture of income and expenditure, but well skilled in traditional occupation and strong faith upon supernatural powers. While extremely low literacy is the basic characteristic of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG) but these tribes are well educated in their culture and tradition as well as completely skilled in their traditional occupation. Birhors educational status has been seen very poor and worst because of living in isolation, unawareness about the benefits of education, poor economic condition, shyness and superstitious beliefs, etc. The objective of this study is to analyze the educational status of Birhor PVTG of two blocks Bagicha and Duldula of Jashpur districts of Chhattisgarh state and elaborate the possible reasons for low level of literacy and backwardness towards the education. The study is based on both primary and secondary data, the primary data is collected through simple random sampling and studying villages are selected by lottery method of simple random sampling. The secondary data are collected through various government reports and data.

METHODOLOGY:

The study is based on Jashpur district of Chhattisgarh, there are total 414 Birhor families are livig in 14 different villages of the state. For the present study 04 villages are chosen by purposive sampling and there are 27 families are living in the sampled village. By the Lottery method of sampling 115 family members were chosen as respondent. Selected respondents are belonging to 14>, 14-20, 20-26 and 26< years of age groups.

Table No. 1 Sampling

S. N.	Name of block	Name of village	Sampled family/family members
1.	Bagicha	Ghagra	10- 42
2.	Bagicha	Bhitghara	09- 38
3.	Bagicha	Dumartoli	02- 12
4.	Duldula	Jhargaon	06- 23
		Total Sampled Family/members-	27- 115

Observations:

Primary data has been collected from the 27 Birhor families and total number of respondents is 115(Table no. 1). Analyzing the educational level of Birhor family it was found that most of the Birhor respondents are illiterate as extremely low level of literacy is the basic characteristics of Birhor PVTG, from the cross tabulation between educational level and gender which is showed in table no. 2 and correlation bar chart No. 1 it was found that male persons are more educated than female while the gap is very less between both the genders. Kumari (2001)¹studied about socio-economic status as well as health status of Birhor women and concludes that Birhor women were taking very significant role in economic activities but about ninety percent respondents were realize that they are not having a respectable position in the family . Their health status is also very poor and they are facing some kind of negligence by the male person of the family. Xaxa (2012)² in his study found that the general status of education among tribal communities is poor and the differences in educational status are highly marked across gender, the educational status of women in tribal society falls far short of educational status of men. While male and female both are having equal participation in economic activity but in other places male person’s role get more influenced than female which may reflect in the present analysis about educational status. Most of the parents are not paying attention towards the modern education as they found it waste of time as most of the children are busy in collecting forest produces and rearing and caring of their younger siblings to maintain their livelihood. Goel (2005)³ found that Birhor tribe of the Raigarh district that the drop outs are higher among Birhor, the enrolment is far better among boys as compared to girls and the elder girls are seems burdened with sibling care and household works. All these conditions are showing that the educational status of both the tribes is very poor and education has not made any significant impact among both the primitive tribes.

Table No. 2 Educational level * Gender Cross tabulation

Count
		Gender		Total
		Male	Female	Total
Educational level	Illiterate	30	42	72
	Primary	26	15	41
	Middle	1	1	2
Total		57	58	115

Bar chart No.1 showing correlation between Educational status and Gender

Second attempt has been made in this research work is that focusing upon the occupation of Birhor and the impact of education on occupation. Table no. 3 and correlation bar chart No. 2 reveals that, most of the respondents are engaged in their traditional occupation of rope making wither they are illiterate or educated. There is a provision of government since a long period to improve educational status of PVTG but instead of this there is found low level of literacy and high dropout rates among Birhor.The government of India in 2015 has been made Conservation Cum Development Plan (CCD) to improve their poor condition in the field of development which includes education and employment. The scheme follows the strategic approach of Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana, which is need-based and strives to optimise utilisation of resources available under various programs and aims at specific outcomes. The CCD plan contains employment opportunities and economic development of PVTGs through Agriculture, Horticulture, Animal Husbandry, Dairy, and Skilling/ Vocational Training, Education, (Literacy, Drop-out, Residential schools in addition to SSA/RMSA) and the expected outcomes of this plan are-Improvement in enrolment rates in schools, Reduction of dropout rates.⁴As government tried a lt to increase literacy among Birhor but instead of that it cannot yet succeed, the reason behind these are their traditional beliefs and practices, unawareness about the benefits of education. Alou though tere is also a scenario that in the civilized society there are lot more persons which are educated but yet not employed an a huge number of unemployed people is the example of failure of the educational system which do not brings sufficient education to get the job or get skilled. But among Birhor it was found that they are well skilled I their traditional occupation of rope making without getting any training from an authorized institution. Rope making is the traditional occupation of Birhor and they learnt it by their ancestors and transferred it to one generation to other.

During the study it was found that Birhor families are earning much income from selling ropes rather than any other occupation. Instead of that they are buying raw material from the market and than make rope from it and selling them into local markets, But if government should provide raw material to them their expenses on raw material get relaxed an they were get more profit from it. Rather giving plain modern education to Birhor children Government should provide skill development programs along with the school education. As well as government should monitor the negative influence of modern society among them as increasing industrialization and civilization brings the situation of forest degradation which directly harms the traditional occupation of Birhors. Firdos (2005)⁵elaborate that Forest degradation, changing workforce structure and population redistribution of Birhor in Jharkhand relate degradation of forest to population growth. Results that the degradation of forest disturbs their traditional occupation of rope making this will directly affect their income which decreases their health status and being caused diminishing population growth. Thus government should have promote the skill development programs along with the schooling because traditional occupation is the important part of the Birhor PVTG if we respect their tradition they should also take one step forward towards the education.

Table No. 3 Educational level * occupation Crosstabulation

Count
		occupation				Total
		Agriculture	Employed	Forest produce gatherers	Rope Making	Total
Educational level	Illiterate	13	0	10	49	72
	Primary	12	5	2	22	41
	Middle	0	0	0	2	2
Total		25	5	12	73	115

Bar chart No.2showing correlation between Educational level and Occupation

Causal factors and the remedies suggested:

The above discussion has portrayed the educational status of the Birhor which is very poor. The reason of the poor educational status may be multidimensional but it seems that the real problem of the PVTGs was not much identified. Since they deeply rooted with their traditional practices and with their habitat and any disturbance in their culture and tradition as well as habitat will make serious problem than the remedy. The planning for their betterment also be in the line of making people self- reliant rather than dependent, because it is difficult to keep the pace of development in community without their active participation. The previous experiences with the developmental plans are showing the dependent attitude of the group and if we talk about the improvement in educational status of Birhor it is suggested that government should promote their traditional occupation of rope making and gathering of forest produce as well as promoting school education. Whichever the group is enlisted as PVTGs, all may be included irrespective of their state boundaries. It will also be better if a common development agency will take care of them in case of inter-state distribution of the group, since the preference as well as working pattern are different in different states (Sahani and Nandy, 2013)⁶. As the use of primitive technology is the basic characteristics of the Birhor tribe and agriculture is also one of the important occupation of this PVTG it should be improved and also the traditional way of rope making should also be technologically improve to get better yields and earnings.

CONCLUDING REMARKS:

The educational status of Birhor tribe is very poor but they are rich in their culture and tradition, they know how to grow plants and conserve forest without going school. They are well trained for their traditional occupation of rope making and give less interest in the school education. There unawareness towards education, living in isolation, shyness, long distance of educational institutions, poverty laid them in this condition. Government also planned a lot of developmental projects for their improvement but yet not succeeded. The reason is the implementations of the plans are basically dependent upon the top to bottom pattern which is found less effective. There should be start bottom up pattern of planning implementation rather than the old pattern. Education must be in terms of their overall socio-economic development instead of giving only book knowledge.

REFERENCE:

1. Kumari, R.; Socio-Economic Conditions and Status of Birhor Tribal Women Indian Tribal Life, Sarup and Sons, New Delhi, 2001, p.212-221.

2. Xaxa, Virginius (2012) “Tribal Education Implications for Development”, Concept Publishing Company Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, p. 22-23

3. Goel, Ajay (2005) ”Literacy Attainment among the Birhor, A Primitive Tribe of Madhya Pradesh”, Social Change 35 (1), p.62-68

4. Government of India, Ministry of Tribal Affairs (N.G.O. Section), F.No.22040/37/2012/NGO, Shastri Bhawan ,New Delhi, Dated- 20^thMarch 2015.

5. Firdos,S.; Forest Degradation, Changing workforce Structure and Population Redistribution the Case of Birhor in Jharkhand, Economic and Political Weekly, 40(8) 2/19-25, 2005, p. 773-778.

6. Sahani, Ramesh and Nandy, Shyamal K. (2013) “Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups in India: An Overview”, Journal of the Anthropological Survey of India, 62(2): (851-865).

Received on 17.11.2018 Modified on 10.12.2018

Res. J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 2018; 9(4): 855-858.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5828.2018.00142.0