Mother Tongue-based Literacy Programmes: Case Studies of Good ...

In the case of adult literacy, we have therefore started literacy in a person’s mother tongue in the initialphase of literacy (total literacy campaign). We propose to introduce the regional language along with themother tongue in the second phase of literacy (post literacy) using bilingual primers and supplementaryreading materials.Brief Profile of the Project SiteGoalpara district, the selected project site, is situated inthe southwestern part of Assam. The river Brahmaputrais to the north of the district. The headquarters ofthe district is Goalpara town. The district is primarilyagrarian, with 90 percent of the people depending onagriculture for their livilihood. The district is home toa large number of ethnic communities, of which theRabhas, Bodos and Garos are dominant groups.Goalpara district has the largest number of Rabhaspeakingpeople. The Rabhas are the fifth largestethnic community among the 23 listed communities© State Resource Centre Assam of Assam. When the Zilla Saksharata Samiti (ZSS)Goalpara District Literacy Committee conducted asurvey of illiterates in the district, it was found that a sizeable number did not want to join literacy classesbecause they were in Assamese. The survey identified about 5,000 learners of Rabha in the community.This made project organizers realize that literacy for adult learners should also be conducted in themother tongue, and the Rabha language was targeted for the project.Strategies and Implementation ProcessNeeds Assessment and Situational AnalysisThere are eleven sub-classes among the Rabas. Among these sub-castes, the Rabha language is spokenby a handful belonging to the Rangdani, Maitori and Kosa groups. The languages spoken by theRangdhani and Moitori are 99 percent similar to each other, and are about 50 percent similar to theKosa dialect. The others have already taken up Assamese as their mother tongue, but the project needsassessment indicated that there is a push inside the community to learn the Rabha language. Thus, incollaboration with the Rabha Literary Society (Rabha Sahitya Sobha), the project initiated activities toteach literacy in the mother tongue.Orthography DevelopmentThe Rabha Literary Society has unanimously adopted the Assamese script for teaching the Rabhalanguage. The development of orthography is, therefore, not required. This is because most of theindigenous speakers use Assamese as their link language with people speaking other languages. Also,Assamese can be easily used to express their language.[ 98 ]