- Amitava Das
Ayodhya Hills (West Bengal), Feb 17 (PTI) After studying in a school for six months, something unusual in her tribe, 13-year-old tribal labourer Sukurmani Besra felt sorry for the Paharia girl she befriended while tending cattle in the forests, but could not bring her to the school. Paharias are a primitive tribe and hunter-gatherers who live in the Ayodhya Hills, a Maoist-affected area known for ecological beauty, in Purilia district of West Bengal.
"I missed Sanjana Paharia and felt sorry for her while studying in the school. So, I asked the teacher if I could ask her to come to school as well," Sukurmani, a student of Saharjuri special school on Ayodhya Hills says. Paharia girls tend cattle, collect firewood and Paharia boys ensnare hare and other small animals for meat. They remain uneducated and away from the touch of modern society, officials say.
Bringing the Paharia boys and girls to school was not easy, they say. Manor Kumar Mahato, a teacher of the special school run under National Child Labour Project, says, "The Paharia parents declined to send kids to school despite our persuasions. They were only convinced when Sukurmani and her school uniform wearing classmates explained to them in their dialect." Two girls and four boys from six Paharia families of Barogora hamlet here have been attending the school for a month. Along with education, the students are given mid-day meal and Rs 100 every month which would be paid after they get admitted to class-V. Barogora is a Paharia hamlet of 19 families who live by hunting in the dense forest of Ayodhya Hills, 55-km south of the district headquarters of Purulia.
Among Paharias, the adult males and females live by hunting, collecting firewood from the forests and selling them in the market and making coir by dry sabai grass locally available, publications on the tribe by Anthropological Survey of India records.
Sanjana says she has been enjoying studies with friends whom she met in the forests. Like Sukurmani, Fudun Mandi and Bhisan Kisku too have brought Urmila Paharia and Lakshman Paharia to school. "I love to study books full of pictures. Now mothers do not usually ask us to accompany them to forests," says Urmila, a ten-year-old Paharia girl.
Project Director of NCLP schools in Purulia, Prasenjit Kundu, says the Paharia students would work with their parents and the tribal boys and girls mostly worked in the local guest houses, lodges, tea stalls and shops which run good business in winter for incoming tourists from towns and distant Kolkata. "The students are also made aware of their rights under UNICEF-supported "Child Activist Project" which aims to provide them a platform to speak out on issues like early marriage, child labour etc," Kundu says. Unicef officials say the students have been working on a newsletter where their articles and reports would be published. Lakshman Paharia says that his father has not been asking him to accompany in hunting and they have not been catching forest animals since attending the school. Teachers now realise that the parents have been supportive to their school-going children. They value the education when the children help them to follow how they were being cheated by unscrupulous buyers in the market, says a girl.
Paharias cannot differentiate between the currency notes of various denominations and are cheated when selling forest product, firewood or coir made of sabai grass in the market, Kundu says.
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