Caste Discrimination keeps Dalit children at bay from schools скачать в хорошем качестве

Caste Discrimination keeps Dalit children at bay from schools

In Pratapgarh district of Uttar Pradesh, a primary school accommodates students from nearby villages. Among them is Mansi, a student of class two. Mansi has a startling revelation: the principal forced her to dispose of the carcas of a puppy. When she refused to do so she was brutally caned. That is not all, she is also regularly made to sweep the school premises. Investigation reveals that many children like Mansi are forced to perform menial tasks like this in school. The reason? They belong to the Dalit community. Mansi’s story is not unique or an aberration. According to UNICEF Dalit girls have the highest rate of exclusion from school due to social discrimination. 51% Dalit children drop out of elementary school as opposed to 37% children from non-Dalit and non-Adivasi communities. The state’s self-congratulatory rhetoric of reducing overall illiteracy and dropout rates hides the murky underbelly of caste discrimination that makes access to education a distant dream for most children from marginalised communities. This, despite the 86th amendment to the Constitution which makes free education for children up to the age of fourteen a fundamental right. Further, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act which came into force in 2010 specifically mentions that schools are duty bound to ‘to ensure that children belonging to disadvantaged group ( i.e. SC/ST ) are not discriminated against and prevented from pursuing and completing elementary education on any grounds’. This video is a compilation of video reports produced by Community Correspondents across India for Video Volunteers. This video was made by a Video Volunteers Community Correspondent. Community Correspondents come from marginalised communities in India and produce videos on unreported stories. These stories are ’news by those who live it.’ they give the hyperlocal context to global human rights and development challenges. See more such videos at www.videovolunteers.org. Take action for a more just global media by sharing their videos and joining in their call for change. we could hyperlink to some VV pages, like our take action page. A version of this article appeared in the EyeZine in April: http://www.eyeartcollective.com/the-d...