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discussed earlier, dry rations seem to have little impact. No wonder the Supreme Court ’s
judgement on serving cooked meals in school instead of distributing dry rations was welcomed by
parents and children. The experience of Karnataka was quite impressive – not just in ensuring
regularity in school, but in making a significant difference to children from the surveyed
households.
Further, our conversations with parents, especially mothers, revealed that what we may consider
ill and malnourished seemed to be ‘normal’ in their perceptions. Subjective perceptions apart, it is
quite likely that these women see only such children in their vicinity and hence conclude that
such looks are ‘normal’. Dr. Ranga Rao further elaborates and qualifies that, ‘other common
factors like poverty, illiteracy, and ignorance of parents, not only directly influence these levels in
education, but also a child’s health. Hence it would be difficult to quantify the influence of the
isolated and individual health factors on successful completion of primary education’.
Community involvement and participation:
The DPEP programme is a major votary of Village Education Committees (VECs), School
Development and Management Committees, Parent Teacher Associations (PTA) and Mother
Teacher Associations (MTA). However, we did not come across effective groups in the surveyed
villages. In fact their absence was most marked in the urban areas, with the exception of
Karnataka where an urban School Development and Monitoring Committee (SDMC) was playing
an important role in the school. Community participation is one of the more misused and
misunderstood words in the development literature. ‘Community’ by itself means very little – it is
like saying ‘India’ or ‘Uttar Pradesh’. Therefore, at the outset, it is important to define community
participation in the specific context of primary education – referring to those parents whose
children are enrolled in government schools or those who are participating from the margins.
In the specific context of government schools community participation should ideally involve
people who have little or no access to basic education but have a greater stake in the school. This
is easier said than done because these are the very people who are the most difficult to reach out
to. The poorest are caught up in the daily battle for survival. From their perspective, education
that does not lead to any tangible or intangible gain can be dismissed as being irrelevant. They do
not readily participate in local societal forums and bodies – whether the Panchayat or the Village
Education Committee or the Village Women’s Health Committee. Even when made mandatory
Educational Resource Unit Page 67 April 2003