The school has a single classroom, but the teacher prefers to take classes in the open courtyard on a sunny December morning. Before him sit about two dozen pupils of various ages, hunched over books and pieces of slate. A low hum of young voices melts into the surrounding countryside. The quiet, picture-perfect quality of the scene belies a bizarre fact, not discernible to the eye. It is this: the teacher doesn?t speak the language of his pupils. He reads aloud from a Bengali primer ? ?Pakhi sab kare rab, raati pohailo (birds chirp, the night has ended)?.

?Pakhi kare koy janis (Do you know what a bird is)?? he asks them. The students stare at him quizzically. The teacher struggles for words, and then points to a bird sitting high up on a tree. The little ones turn their heads but they can see only the foliage. ?Shakam shakam!? says a boy to his mates. In Santhali, shakam means leaves. All the boys and girls are Santhals but the teacher, who is from the nearby town, is a Bengali. He has been posted here for eight years but has not bothered to learn Santhali, or majhider buli, as the gentlefolk here prefer to call it. This is a not-so-remote village in Purulia, but one can find such scenes in other parts of West Bengal, especially where there is a high concentration of tribal population.

In districts like Purulia and Jalpaiguri, the percentage-wise representation of scheduled tribes is 20 per cent and more. Simply put, it means at least one out of every five primary school-going children here speaks a language other than Bangla. But that is supposing the enrolment rate among tribal children is the same as among the non-tribal. The reality, however, is grim as fewer tribal children go to primary schools compared to those belonging to the general category, or even the scheduled castes. The drop-out rate, too, is significantly higher among the tribals.

Unfortunately, no study has yet been made on what role the language of instruction plays in all this. This is particularly depressing since the language issue in primary education has been a site of much bitter polemic in our state during the last twenty-five years. Thus, while middle class opinion has sizzled over the abolition of English at the primary stage, we seem to have forgotten that there are a large number of children living in our state who have different mother tongues. They are in all parts of the state, belonging to tribes like Santhal, Munda, Shabar or other linguistic groups living in north Bengal and in the hill areas. While the state government has given recognition to Santhali in the school curriculum, Santhals being the largest tribal group, in reality there are very few primary school teachers who either belong to these tribes or are equipped to teach in these languages.

In fact, there is cause for concern not only because of what the reality is, but the mindset of the educated people who have let things remain as they are. Whenever one puts forward the issue of minority languages as the media of instruction at the lower primary level, the stock response is to raise the problem of feasibility. There is also a tendency to evoke a pan-Bengali identity that binds the people living in all parts of the state, irrespective of their ethnic origins. How deep-rooted this mindset is can be best illustrated by an example.

This writer had the opportunity to visit another primary school in Purulia where, unlike in the first instance, the teacher and all the students were Santhals. But surprisingly, the teacher was using Bangla as the medium of instruction. When this was pointed out to her, she showed us the textbooks written in Bangla and confessed, rather apologetically, that her pupils understood the lessons better when she used one or two words in their mother tongue. The fact is, nobody has ever told her that she should and must use mother tongue to beat the lessons into the young minds.

Now, let us make one or two things clear. Bangla is, and will be, the lingua franca in all parts of our state except in the hill subdivisions and one must master it in order to enter the social mainstream. In fact, the people in our state from all ethnic origins learn it naturally at an early age, whether they ever go to school or not. But it is also a fact that in the rural areas, tribal children of the early school-going age speak and understand only their mother tongue. They have a constitutional right to be instructed in their own language at the lower primary stage, and this was clearly put forward in the report of the Kothari commission back in the Sixties: ?The medium of education in the first two years of the school should be the tribal language and books should be specially prepared in these languages for use at this stage...By the third year, the regional language should be the medium of education (Report of the Education Commission, 1964-66).?

But precious little has been done to implement this wisdom, despite several government schemes like Sarva Siksha Abhijan and district primary education projects covering several districts with large tribal population. As a result, although the enrolment of ST children at the primary level has increased in our state, the rate of drop-out is alarming. Over the years, several schemes have been launched to woo the weaker sections, like mid-day meals, free text books and uniforms for girl children. But no effort has yet been made to address the language problem among the tribes.

There are different aspects of this problem that has to be taken care of. For instance, what should be the medium of instruction in mixed population areas, where tribal children share the classroom with their Bengali-speaking mates? While it is neither practicable nor proper to have separate schools for tribal children, as it goes against the ethos of a pluralist society, other ways can be found to tackle the issue. There can be more anganwadi centres and Sishu Siksha Kendras in tribal areas, where locally-recruited sahayikas can teach the children the basics of learning in their mother tongue. Also, more primary school teachers should be recruited from the tribal population, and it has to be ensured that they are posted where they are needed the most.

In the absence of any clear policy in this regard, a shameful reality has been found to exist in many rural schools. There is an almost literal kind of marginalization within the classroom as pupils from tribal background (often referred to as chhotolok) are made to sit separately. This was uncovered in Amartya Sen?s Pratichi Trust education report, first published in 2002, where it was also pointed out that some teachers even shunned physical contact with these pupils for fear of pollution. Instead, they touched these children with sticks. Proud as we are about the absence of casteism in West Bengal, many of us would hardly acknowledge such shocking truths.

Even the Pabitra Sarkar committee report, set up by the state education department to study the language issue, refers to the strange phenomenon of two classes existing within class I, the ?Baro One? and ?Chhoto One?, that was found in many village schools. The ?baro ones?, or senior class ones, are pupils with better proficiency in the three Rs and are segregated from their junior counterparts, the ?chhoto ones?.

It needs no guesses to find out which part of the class the tribal children generally find themselves in. Away from the attention of the teachers who speak a different language, pushed to the margins of the classroom, they become prone to drop out of schools. In effect, they get the first taste of deprivation that hound them through their lives.

Perhaps it is a coincidence that the linguistically deprived areas in our state have recently become sites of violent disturbances. With elections round the corner, the government has begun to speak the language of development in tribal areas. It would be nice if this begins in the classroom, in a language the little ones can understand.