A study on literacy and educational attainment of scheduled castes population in Maldah District of West Bengal, India

Literacy level and educational attainment are vital indicators of development of any society. In spite of many socio-economic securities provided to scheduled castes in the constitution and by the government, scheduled castes are still comparatively illiterates and less educated than general category. This could be attributed to a variety of reasons such as early age marriage, high female illiteracy due to importance to male child, child labour, superstition, dominance of higher castes, and deprivation from socio-economic status etc. Education is an important variable affecting demographic behavior concerning marriage, fertility, mortality, migration as well as participation in labour force. In a number of research studies, a clear cut negative relationship has been established between the educational level of women and fertility. The age of females at marriage is also affected by the educational attainment of females. Even infant mortality is found to be affected by the educational status of mother. Thus there is a need to study on literacy and educational attainment of scheduled castes of Maldah district and to give suggestions for their educational development.


INTRODUCTION
India is a laboratory of race religions and various cultures.The census of India 1901 identified some unclean castes suffering from disabilities and classified them as "Unclean Castes".In the year 1935, the British Government in India prepared for the first time a list of castes, which are referred to as scheduled castes (S.Cs.).Scheduled castes commonly known as "Untouchables", "Chamars", "Harijans", "Down Trodden", "Dalits", "Bhangis", "Sudras" etc.The scheduled castes were kept apart from the rest of the society due to the prevalent practice of untouchability.
The Indian caste system based on the notion of purity and pollution believed that the scheduled castes were impure and polluted.The schedule castes are comparatively backward in occupational, educational, social, cultural, religious and political sector.
The scheduled castes of Maldah District are not evenly distributed.There are wide gaps between scheduled castes and higher castes in terms of level of income, standard of living, fertility and mortality; social parameters like education, age at marriage, family planning programmes, superstitions etc.The disparity in the literacy and the level of educational attainment is also observed in rural and urban scheduled castes.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Risley (1891) working on the Tribes and Castes of Bengal has highlighted the origin of the castes and prevalence of infant marriage in Bengal.The book "People of India-West Bengal (Part I and II)" edited by K.S. Singh (2008), is based on origin, characteristics, distribution and socio-economic-political and religious conditions of S.Cs. of West Bengal.Sekhar Bandyopadhyay in his book "Caste, Culture and Hegemony -Social Dominance in Colonial Bengal" (2004) have described the historiography of caste in Bengal and social mobility and the status of women.Sunderaj (2000) has contributed a lot on education, inter-caste relationship reservation, welfare schemes, socio-economic condition, political participation and social mobility of scheduled castes in his book, "Scheduled Castes of Rural India: Problem and Prospects".Shah (1982) in his book "The Educational Problems of Scheduled castes and Scheduled Tribe School and college Students in India" tried to examine various programmes and problems for the educational development of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in the country.Chatterjee (2000) in his study entitled "Educational Development of Scheduled Castes Looking Ahead" described the constitutional provisions for educational development for scheduled castes (S.Cs.) literacy, special facilities for educational advancement of the SCs, advancement of SCs in higher education, educational inequalities, and reservation for SCs in educational institutions and educational development and social integration.In his book he highlighted on enrolment ratio, disparities among SCs in the educational attainments, eradication of child labour and effect of education on marriage of SCs.Goswami (2003) in his book "Constitutional Safeguards for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes" described about different laws and acts made for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.
The objectives of the study are to compare the literacy rate between populations belongs to scheduled castes and general category, to describe the block level variations in scheduled castes literates, to highlight the education related issues of scheduled castes and to highlight the causes and effects of illiteracy.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The households have been selected from the both urban and rural areas of all 15 blocks adopting simple random sampling without replacement (SRSWOR) method.For the final selection a sample of 1% of the scheduled castes households from both the rural and urban areas has been drawn.The total number of sample households is 1071 rural and 73 urban.
To find out the relationship between the social and economic parameters bi-variate regression analysis has been worked out.The study is based on both primary and secondary data.The primary data has been collected through door-to-door survey and field observation methods, while the secondary data are collected from various government sources.

Study area
Maldah district of West Bengal lies between 24°40´2" North to 25°32´08" North latitude and 87°45´50" East to 88°28´10" East longitude.Bihar and Jharkhand lie in the West and Bangladesh in the East of Maldah district.The Ganga River lies in the South and separated the district from South Bengal while Uttar and Dakshin Dinajpur district of West Bengal lie in the North of Maldah district.The total population of the district is 32, 90,468.The district has population density of 881 persons/sq.km.There are 554165 scheduled castes population which is 16.84% of total population of the district (Figure 1).

Discrimination in different place of interaction
The S.Cs earlier suffered from discrimination in almost all place of interaction.They were discrimination in places such as work place, common gathering, the marriages and ceremonies of higher castes.They were not allowed to enter the tea stalls and hotels which other higher castes Hindus visit.
Table 1 represents that the SCs respondents of Maldah district feel discriminated in work place, marriage and ceremonies of higher castes, marriage with higher castes and in common gatherings.2.05% rural and 2.74% urban respondents faced discrimination in schools and colleges.Out of total 1071 rural respondents 2 (0.20%) and 25 (34.25%)urban respondents reported that they feel no discrimination from higher castes.The lower percentage of discrimination in all cases in urban areas reveals that the socioeconomic development of scheduled castes can reduce the discrimination.

Reasons for upper castes to keep SCs at a distance
It is clear from Table 2 that out of all the respondents who feel that the upper castes discriminate against them, the majority of them (88.04% rural and 97.26% urban) feel that their birth into the caste is the main reason why the upper castes keep them at a distance.
The other important reasons for distance between upper castes and scheduled castes of rural areas are unclean occupation (4.86%), illiteracy (2.71%) and poor economic condition (2.71%).According to 1.37 urban respondents, fear of pollution and unclean occupation are reasons between upper caste and scheduled castes.

Respondents belong to B.P.L.
Ever since independence, government has formulated and implemented various programmes and policies for the overall development of the country.Many of these programmes had been directly related with the upliftment of the rural masses in general and scheduled castes in particular.But 538 (50.23%) households belong to below poverty level in rural areas but there is no B.P.L. family among the selected 73 urban households (Table 3).

Number of families living below the poverty line
Table 4 indicates that S.Cs families living below poverty line are very high compared to the general caste families of the district.Despite a reduction in the percentage of the population living below poverty line, the incidence of poverty amongst scheduled castes continues to be very high, when compared to the general population.The main reasons for this are: 1. Majority of scheduled castes are landless, 2. They have very few productive assets, 3. Devoid of sustainable employment, 4. Long duration of work with low wage, 5. Due to gender disparity, women belonging to scheduled castes are denied of both minimum and equal wages.6. Unemployment due to low levels of educational attainment and illiteracy etc.

Literacy trends of scheduled castes (S.Cs.) and general category population
A sharp contrast in literacy is observed between one part of the district to another, between males and females, between religious groups, between castes and between rural and urban population (Rajawat, 2005).According to 2001 census, the crude literacy rate of the scheduled castes of Maldah was 42.18%, whereas the literacy rate of general category was 57.71%.So, the gap between scheduled castes and general category was 15.53% (Figure 2).
Of the total 233706 scheduled caste, literates the male and female literacy rate was 63.15 and 36.85%,respectively.So, the gender gap in literacy rate of scheduled castes was 26.30% in the district as per 2001 census.The block wise high disparity is also observed in female literacy rate.The highest and lowest female literacy is observed in Kaliachak-I block (38.02%) and in Chanchal-II block (16.95%) of the district.
In spite of many socio-economic securities provided to them in the constitution and by the government, they are still comparatively less educated and backward.Table 5 indicates that the literacy rate of S.Cs. was 13.79, 13.49, 20.41, 38.23 and 42.18% as per 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001 census, respectively.This is also observed that the gap between general and S.Cs.population had increased in terms of literacy rate compared to general category population.

BLOCK WISE VARIATIONS IN LITERACY RATES OF SCHEDULE CASTES
As per 2001 census, the literacy rate of SCs of Maldah district is 42.18%.Highest literacy rate is observed in    6).

Literate and illiterate population
Education is considered to be one of the chief instruments through which a society socializes all members.
The literacy rates vary among the scheduled castes in rural and urban areas.In urban areas, 81.51% male and 77.27% female are literate while 18.49% male and 22.73% female are illiterate.In rural areas, 60.36% male and 51.55 % female are literate and 39.64% male and 51.55% female are illiterate (Table 7).The gap between male and female literates is about 12 and 4% in rural and urban areas of Maldah district, respectively.The main causes behind the variation of literacy rates in rural and urban areas are: a. Poor economic condition of rural population.

Educational attainment of scheduled castes
"In a number of research studies, a clear-cut negative relationship has been established between the educational level of women and fertility.The age of females at marriage is another demographic variable which is influenced by the level of educational attainment.Even infant mortality is found to be affected by the educational status of the mother"" (Bhende and Kanitkar, 2003).
Table 8 shows that 44.85% of the literate males and 21.30% of the literate females of rural area are of the the primary level (IV standard) while in urban areas 20.62% of the literate males and 34.12% of the literate females are of the the primary level (IV standard).
Rural urban disparity is observed in graduation and post-graduation level.In rural areas of Maldah district, 6.10% male and only 2.13 % female are graduates, whereas in urban areas 11.34% male and 10.59 % female are graduates.So the gap in graduation level between rural and urban areas is 5.24% for male and 8.46% for female.
Disparity again is observed in post-graduation level in male and female of rural and urban areas of Maldah district.Only 2.87% male and 0.85% female of rural Maldah are post-graduates whereas 9.28% of male and 8.23% of female of urban areas are post-graduates.So, the gap in post-graduation level between rural and urban areas is 6.41% for male and 7.38% for female.The findings of the reasons for the disparity in Education in daughter and son are in rural and urban areas are: a. Poor economic condition of rural respondents and to give dowry for daughter in rural areas.b.Early age marriage for daughter in rural areas.c.Highly educated son can take responsibility of their families" ofter getting job but after marriage daughter will be the member of other families.This attitude is the main cause for the disparity in education in rural areas.d.In some cases, conservativeness is the causes for low education of daughter in rural areas.

Enrolment of children in school
The respondents were asked whether all the children above 5 years go to the school, 970 (90.57%) replied positive and 9.43% replied negative.But in this case the disparity among urban and rural areas is observed.In urban areas, all SCs children above 5 years age go to the school but in rural areas the scenario is not same due to poor economic condition and awareness (Table 9).

Dropout of the students
Though the enrolment of SCs children have increased during last few decades, particularly at primary level, the dropout rates among these children continue to be very high.In rural areas, the rate of dropout is high whereas no dropout is recorded in urban areas (Table 10).Out of total 132 dropout students, majority (65.91%) are of primary level whereas remaining 34.09% are of high school level.
Reasons for high rate of dropout: The reasons for high rate of dropout of children are: i. Poor economic condition and illiteracy of families, ii.To join the labour force to supplement meager family income, iii.Large number of boys and girls work as child labour in "bidi' factories here iv.Early age at marriage of females.

Inter-generational educational mobility
It is clear from the Table 11 that the majority of the rural scheduled castes respondents are illiterates throughout all the three successive generations.The analysis of the table also shows that in grand fathers" time in rural areas there were 898 (83.85%) illiterates and only 173 (16.15%) literates out of 1071.Even among these 173 literates, 53.76% (93) of them have only primary education whereas in urban areas there were only        In the respondent"s time, there were some improvements with 465 (43.42%) literate in rural areas and 69 (94.52%) literates in urban areas.Among the literates at the respondents time, at least 290 (62.37%) of them in rural areas and 64(92.75%) in urban areas had high school level or more education.
However, among the respondents, 175 (37.63%) literates in rural and 05 (07.25 %) literates in urban areas had only primary education.At the time of recent generation or at the time of children of respondents the literacy rate is much higher, even the quality of education is also better (Wankhede, 1999).

Respondent's education on regular and non-regular basis
Out of total 465 rural literate respondents, 297 (63.87%) have complete their education on regular basis and 168 (36.13%) on non-regular basis.In case of urban areas, among 69 literate respondents, 61 (88.41%) completed their education on regular basis and 8 (11.59%) on nonregular basis (Table 12).
Finding shows that the percentage of respondents who have completed entire education on regular basis is more in urban areas (88.41%) compared to rural areas (63.87%).This is because of the fact that due to better socioeconomic condition of urban respondent, they have completed their education on regular basis but due to poor economic condition, the rural respondents were   forced to join any kind of job to meet the financial need of their families and 36.13%respondents have completed their education on non-regular basis.

Discontinuation in education
Out of total 465 rural literate respondents, 190 (40.86%) have discontinued their education.The analysis of the discontinuation in education (Table 13) of SCs respondents clearly shows that out of total 190 respondents 84 (44.21%) discontinued their education in primary level, 65 (34.21%) in high school level, 37 (19.47%) in college level and 04 (2.10%) in University level.Of total 69 literate urban respondents, only 09 (13.04%) have discontinued their education.So, the gap between urban and rural respondents in terms of discontinuation of education is 27.82%.In urban areas 66.67, 22.22 and 11.11%, respondents discontinued their education at college level, university level and high school level respectively.
So, it is clear from the study that in rural areas the case of discontinuation is high (44.21%) at primary level whereas in urban areas the dropout rate is high (66.67%) at college level.

Reasons for discontinuation in Education
Table 14 represents the reasons for discontinuation in education of scheduled castes respondents.The analysis of the table clearly shows that out of the 190 rural respondents160 (84.21%) had discontinued their education for financial problem, 22 (11.58%) for lack of educational facilities, 06 (03.16%) for domestic problems and 02 (01.05%) for social discrimination.In urban areas, 55.56, 22.22 and 22.22% respondents" had discontinued their education for financial and domestic problem and lack of educational facility.

Facility during education of respondents
Majority of the SCs are concentrated in rural areas and are illiterate.Therefore, the general awareness about these facilities is very low.So, due to lack of awareness in rural areas these facilities are very low here.
Consequently, the facilities mostly go unutilized or are utilized at a minimum level.The major of the facilities are utilized by the scheduled castes population of urban areas.The Table 15 shows that majority of the respondents utilize these facilities.
Out of total 465 literate respondents" of rural areas, 182 (39.14%) and 10 (14.49%) of urban areas did not avail of the facilities even though they were available.27.10% respondents "in rural areas and 31.89%respondents" of rural areas had availed material facilities (Scholarship, Hostel, Books, Cloths etc.).The facility reservation in admission was availed by only 3.01 and 14.49% rural and urban respondents" respectively.
Among the different facilities highest number of respondents received material and reservation facility.30.75% rural and 39.13% urban respondents" availed both the material and reservation facility.Respondents" did not avail of the facilities due to following causes: a. Due to not having any relevant information, b.Used to feel bad or humiliated and c.Due to high income of families.

Findings on the study of education are:
1. Majority of the scheduled castes are illiterates throughout all the three successive generations, respondent, father and grandfather.2. The majority of the urban respondents and their father and grand-father are literates over three successive generations.3. Percentage of respondents who completed their education on regular basis is more in urban (88.41%) area than rural area (63.87%).4. 190 (40.86%) respondents of rural areas and 9 (13.04%)respondents of urban area have discontinuation in education.The rate of discontinuation in education is high (44.21%) at primary level in rural area whereas in urban area the rate is high (66.67%) in college level.5. Majority of the urban (55.56%) and rural respondents (84.21%) had discontinued their education due to the financial problem.Dropout rate of children is observed more in rural areas at primary level.6. Majority of the urban respondents (52.17%) had completed their education without job during study whereas only 12.69% rural respondents completed their education without job.7. Majority of the rural respondents (53.92%) did not avail any facility at school level due to the lack of knowledge and they used to feel bad to disclose their caste.

Suggestions for educational development
Pre-matric scholarship was started in 1977 to 1978.The 1.It is suggested that the amount of book grant should be increased for them and Government should bear total cost of books for the families living below poverty line and for the students who are first generation learners of poor families.
2. The illiterate scheduled castes living below poverty line or who are of low income groups should be aware that in the case of them income might be less important.The facilities for education are being provided by the government with, free education; free Ashram Hostels, scholarships hostel facilities, reservation in admission and employment.So, educational development may not be dependent on income.
3. There are only 595 seats in hostels for the S.C. students studying in class V to X in the 8 block of the Maldah district.So, the seats should be increased.4. District welfare office has introduced "Job Oriented Course" for the scheduled castes students from the session 2010 to 2011.Majority of the respondents have no information of these types of courses.So, it is also suggested that they must be informed by advertisement or by special camps.Besides this, the number of seats is very limited for them.So, it is also suggested that the government should increase the number of seats for the "Job Oriented Courses" for their betterment.5. Lastly, the government should take initiatives for the economic development of scheduled castes for their educational development.

Conclusion
After independence, scheduled castes are going under social and economic changes both in rural and urban areas.Various constitutional amendments gave rights to scheduled castes.They are also given reserved quotas on various organizations in order to abolish untouchability and other taboos.They are becoming more conscious about the education and job of their children.Their attitude towards religion, child marriage, superstitions, etc. is changing.Economic transformation is also not lagging behind.By and large, they are no longer bonded or permanent labourers.They are now gradually becoming marginal farmers and have started working in non-agricultural sectors too.
The educated rural scheduled castes now prefer nonagricultural activities and the considerable number of such youth is in banking, marketing, education, administration and judicial services.
Education is crucial parameter of social and human development.Thus, education has emerged as the only

Table 1 .
Feeling discrimination in different place of interaction.
Source: -Prepared by researcher based on field study, 2010.

Table 2 .
Reasons for distance between scheduled castes and upper castes.

Table 5 .
Literacy rates of scheduled castes and general category population, 1961 to 2011.

Table 7 .
Literate and illiterate population.
Source: Prepared by researcher based on field study-2010.

Table 8 .
Educational attainment of scheduled castes.

Table 9 .
Enrolment of children in school.
Source: Prepared by researcher based on field study-2010.

Table 11 .
Educational attainment of scheduled castes over three generations

Table 12 .
Education of respondents on regular/non-regular basis.

Table 13 .
Discontinuation in education of respondents.
Source: Prepared by researcher based on field study-2010.

Table 14 .
Reasons for discontinuation in education.
Source: prepared by researcher based on field study-2010.

Table 15 .
Facility during education of respondents.
Table 16 represents the positive and negative relationship between crude literacy rate among SCs and other variables.It is clear that of the 15 variables four have strong negative correlation with the crude literacy rate while remaining eleven have positive correlation with the crude literacy rate.B.P.L. families, discontinuation in education, dowry system present in families and large family size are negatively correlated with the crude literacy rate.Awareness of laws for scheduled castes, preference of inter-caste marriage, awareness of family planning, high monthly income etc. is positively correlated with the crude literacy rate.

Table 16 .
Relationship between crude literacy rate of scheduled castes and important socio-economic variables.