Tribal Empowerment Program

Ever since India become independent, government determined to uplift the downtrodden, especially, the SC & ST communities. To this effect, the government has come up with different kinds of programs and schemes, on the subtle examination of the schemes from the point of view of implementation; it appears that much is said than done. In other words, much remains to be done.

According to 2001 census, ST population constitutes 8.2% of the nation’s total population with over 84 millions of people. In Andhra Pradesh their population was 5 millions out of total population of 75.7 million. In addition, AP’s literacy rate was 60.5% and the literacy rate of ST population was as low as 17%.

The government’s Programs towards the upliftment of the SCs & STs are primarily based on two major considerations: first, to overcome the multiple deprivations that SCs & STs have inherited due to exclusion in the past and, to the extent possible, bring them on par with rest of the society; second, to provide them with protection against exclusion and discrimination by encouraging their effective participation in the social, economical and political processes of the country. To achieve these objectives, the government’s approach has a two fold strategy consisting of anti-discriminatory or protective measures, and development & empowering measures.

Among all the dimensions of upliftment, Education and Employment are the most vital domains for the empowerment of SCs & STs.

Firstly to elicit about educational discourse, India has 367 Universities, 6216 professional colleges with hundreds of courses and lakhs of intakes. The figures are ‘big’ but the proud ‘ians’ are less.

It is essential to ensure that the schemes are implemented with a thrust on ‘Quality Teaching’. ‘Quality Education ‘in true sense must lead a student to discover his or herself through enlightenment Lack of discipline & determination on part of the students is one of the many hurdles: Precisely

Quality education is the need of the hour for every student to become employable.
Awareness of the Schemes available for SC & ST Students

Hurdles in meeting the above objective: The Crux of the Objectives is to empower the students with required knowledge and confidence for economic freedom through employment.

In spite of some special provisions made available through law, it is observed that most of the students belonging to these sections are unable to succeed in their career and fail to be employed. As understood, field experts have come up with some observation in this regard.

Majority of SC & ST students are not aware of the support structure available to help them to attend GRE / TOFEL / GATE / CAT coaching during their engineering / Professional education.
Inadequate hostel facilities for SC / ST students in the towns / cities and in institutions offering a large number of self-financing courses in Engineering / Medical / Pharmacy etc.
Students are also financially constrained to afford heavy expenditure on study material, text books, records, laboratory manuals, work shops dress materials etc.