Bhubaneswar, Aug. 19: The state government is looking for tribal storytellers in various pockets of the state to promote multilingual education (MLE).

The government intends to train the storytellers and use their service to make studies interesting for kids.

P. Patel, a researcher with the Academy of Tribal Languages and Culture, said: "A tribal storyteller can present tales with the right mix of poetry and humour, making it very entertaining for children. The students get attracted to such narration."

The purpose of a multilingual education programme is to develop appropriate cognitive and reasoning skills, enabling children to operate equally in their mother tongue, state as well as national language. The mother tongue of tribal children will be used as the medium of instruction for the first five years of primary education. Odia will be introduced from Class II and English from Class VI.

The state has 62 Scheduled Tribes, out of which 26 have their own ethnic languages. Of these, 10 tribal languages have been adopted under the MLE approach.

Efforts are also on to develop dictionaries and reference books in various tribal languages. These books are being compiled with the help of resource persons, who will identify elderly citizens at the tribal villages. Relevant inputs will be taken from them to make the study materials authentic.

Work has already begun for languages such as Koya, Saura, Desia, Kui, Kuvi, Kurux, Kissan, Khadi, Sadri, Munda and Bihal.

However, with many tribal dialects facing severe threat, the department is facing it difficult to find the required number of storytellers.

Officials in the state ST and SC development department had a tough time looking for storytellers in Gutab language spoken by the Gadaba tribal people, usually found in Lamtaput and Nandapur blocks of Koraput district.

"It took them three days to find a storyteller, who was fully conversant in Gutab language in spite the fact that there are more than one lakh population of Gadabas," Patel said.

Some tribal communities such as the Santhals in Keonjhar are very keen to retain their language and tradition. The language is the medium of teaching in more than 100 schools across Mayurbhanj district.