Though India is hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, our small cluster of two Adivasi villages in West Bengal has not suffered infections yet. We do feel the economic impacts of course. […] Farm work has continued quietly. To many Santals, one lesson of the pandemic has been that agriculture provides the safest livelihoods. It goes on even when other sectors close down. | Read more >>
Regions noted for their wealth of tribal heritage: culture & ecology
Nilgiri Biosphere | Bake Restudy Project (UCLA Digital Library)
Regional Zonal Cultural Centres
Eastern Zonal Cultural Centre, Kolkata
Eastern region – Eastern Zonal Council
North Central Zone Cultural Centre, Prayagraj
Uttar Pradesh
North East Zone Cultural Centre, Dimapur
Seven Sister States & Sikkim – North Eastern Council
North Zone Cultural Centre, Patiala
Northern region – Northern Zonal Council
South Central Zone Cultural Centre, Nagpur
Central region – Central Zonal Council
South Zone Cultural Centre, Thanjavur
Southern region – Southern Zonal Council
West Zone Cultural Centre, Udaipur
Western region – Western Zonal Council
Up-to-date information: Zonal Cultural Centres >>
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Adivasi Academy & Museum of Adivasi Voice at Tejgadh | Lecture “A View of Higher Education in India”
Anganwadi | Community facilities | Ekalavya
Appropriate education for Adivasi children – the Vidyodaya School model at Gudalur
Childhood | Children’s books | Childrens rights: Education | UNICEF India | Safe search
eBook | Background guide for education
Santali education | Teaching Santal children by Boro Baski
Unesco | Unicef | Unicef India | United Nations
United Nations International Days and Weeks
We cannot let our culture and society stop (interview)
Home, shelter and security as well as music, education, nature, and books for every child
In 1911, the American poet and novelist James Oppenheim wrote the now infamous poem “Bread and Roses“, inspired by the women’s suffrage activist Helen Todd. Working as a factory inspector for the state of Illinois, Todd spent her days listening to women’s accounts of low pay, inequality, and the drudgery of their work. Along with four other women from the Chicago Women’s Club, an association of wealthy middle-class women that had recently established some of the first kindergartens in Chicago, Todd began organising Illinois automobile workers for women’s right to vote in the summer of 1910. Inspired by a discussion she had with a young woman the night before giving a speech, Todd pronounced that the women’s “vote will go toward helping forward the time when life’s Bread, which is home, shelter and security, and the Roses of life, music, education, nature, and books, shall be the heritage of every child that is born in the country“. More than 70 years after the Seneca Falls convention declared women’s universal suffrage as its goal, the seemingly impossible became inevitable, and in 1920 Congress past the Nineteenth amendment to the US Constitution.
Source: Radical Abundance: How to Win a Green Democratic Future >>
“If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? … I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and … toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable, and that by preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.”
George Orwell quoted in Two Cheers for Democracy (London: Penguin Books 1976), p. 76 | Learn more about Childhood | Childrens rights: UNICEF India | Safe search | Ecology and environment | Misconceptions | Modernity | Seasons and festivals | Social conventions >>
The house, in which British novelist George Orwell was born more than 110 years ago, has been converted into a museum by the Bihar Government >>
SafeSearch: Find educational and children’s books on tribal culture published in India
List of sites covered by this Google SafeSearch engine
https://books.katha.org (Katha Books)
https://publicationsdivision.nic.in
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Residential, Ashram and Factory schools
Ekalavya (Eklavya, Eklabya): the name of a legendary archer prodigy “who, being a Nishada [Sanskrit Niṣāda, “tribal, hunter, mountaineer, degraded person, outcast”], had to give his thumb as a fee to the brahmin guru thus terminating his skill as an archer.” – Romila Thapar (“The epic of the Bharatas”) | Read the full paper here | Backup download link (pdf) >>
More about India’s “Ekalavya Residential School Scheme”, “Ashram Schools” and “Factory schools”
Ekalavya Residential School Scheme (EMR): a network of boarding schools where tribal children are to be educated in accordance with rules and syllabi provided by the government; such schools are being designated as “Eklavya Model Residential School (EMR)” with the objective of empowering students “to be change agent, beginning in their school, in their homes, in their village and finally in a large context.” – Government Guidelines 2010 | Backup >>
Residential School and Ashram School
In some regions there are similar “Residential Schools” and “Ashram Schools” for tribal children, as in Tripura where they are managed by a society called “Tripura Tribal Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society (TTWREIS)” – Tribal Welfare Department, Government of Tripura
Factory schools “exist to turn tribal and indigenous children – who have their own language and culture – into compliant workers-of-the-future. The world’s largest Factory School stated that it turns ‘Tax consumers into tax payers, liabilities into assets’.” – survivalinternational.org/factoryschools | Learn more >>
Learn more about Childrens rights: UNICEF India | Ekalavya (Eklavya, Eklabya), EMR & Factory schools | Rights of Indigenous Peoples >>