Sweet dreams come true in sugar country

Come cane-cutting season, lakhs migrate to Maharashtra's sugar country with kids in tow. It's Hingoli one season and Dhule the next, all for work. But as parents labour in the fields that feed the state's big sugar industry, it is the children who miss out on education during the six-month span of the cutting season that begins in October-November. And it is not a small number as surveys have found that among these seasonal migrants are two lakh kids aged between six and 14. With no schools, the children either accompany their parents to the fields or while away time at temporary settlements near the factories. The prolonged break from schooling results in loss of interest and eventually the children drop out.

But things are slowly changing, thanks to the shakkar shalas that have come up in the vicinity of sugar cooperatives in the last few years. The schools, run by NGOs, offer primary education up to class VII to children of migrant labourers. As the sugar industry is quite labour-intensive, every year, nearly five lakh people from the socio-economically backward areas of Marathwada (Beed, Aurangabad, Hingoli and Parbhani districts), north Maharashtra (Jalgaon, Nashik, Nandurbar and Dhule) and drought-prone parts of Ahmednagar migrate to western Maharashtra as well as to parts of Karnataka and Gujarat.

Since the children lose out on continuity in education, this is where the 'second-semester' schools run by organisations like the Pune-based Jnana Prabodhini and rural development NGO Janarth of Aurangabad come in. "The focus is on basic skills - reading, writing and maths as well as developing character and physical fitness," explains Pravin Mahajan, founder head of Janarth. Post-exams, the students return to schools in their native place for the first term of the next academic year.

The Aurangabad-based NGO alone operates 126 shakkar shalas covering 15,000 children and 39 sugar factory sites, most of them located in the sugar belt of Kolhapur, Sangli, Satara, Pune and Ahmednagar. Some schools are located in Gulbarga and Belgaum districts of Karnataka and Surat district of Gujarat.

The schools have attained a retention rate of 75% to 77%. The retention rate refers to the number of children who appeared for the exam and those returning to the shakkar shalas in the second semester of the ensuing year.

Jnana Prabodhini, which is credited with giving the real push to the shakkar shala concept in the early 1990s, runs schools at 20 sugar factory sites besides training other eight other NGOs.

In 2002, the Maharashtra government decided to promote sakhar shalas through the Mahatma Phule Shikshan Hami Yojana (MPSHY), which was made part of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan. The initiative spurred similar experiments in other fields - bhatta shalas for children of brick-kiln workers in Rajasthan.

There is still more to do to cover all the children. But the story so far has been sweet. "Shakkar shala students are doing well in exams," says Mahajan.

source:timesofindia