By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter,
Kozhikode: As many as hundred tribal study centres will be established in Wayanad in a bid to bring a qualitative change in the lives of the indigenous people in the district. A decision in this regard was taken at the ‘Adivasi Parliament’ held under the aegis of the Adivasi Kshema Samithi (AKS), a feeder outfit of the CPM, which concluded here on March 3.
Hundreds of community members attended the programme, which was organised to discuss various problems confronted by tribal people. The topics that came up for discussion included the vexed land issue, education, health and labour issues, alcoholism, atrocities against community members and the threat posed by the Kyasanur Forest Disease (KFD) or monkey fever.
The draft proposals approved by the ‘Adivasi Parliament’ included panchayat level conventions, tribal career guidance centre, observance of tribal education day on June 25, Jagrata Samithis to tackle the rising drop-out rate among tribal students and aggressive campaigns to ensure 100 per cent enrollment of tribal children.
The meet also decided to launch a ‘tribal labour bank’. The first branch will be opened in Meenangadi Panchayat of Wayanad district on May 1. One of the issues that came up for serious deliberations was alcohol abuse among the community members. “The government needs to chart out concrete measures to curb alcoholism, which is found to be rampant among tribal people. To discuss the issue and to find a solution to it, meetings will be conducted in 2,000 tribal colonies in May and June,” said AKS district secretary P Vasudevan.
The ‘parliament’ also demanded nutrition kits to check issues of malnutrition among tribal people and to bring down the infant mortality rate, metric hostels in three taluks, free food and medicines to patients suffering from diseases such as sickle-cell anaemia, cancer, tuberculosis and mental illness, better employment opportunities to tribal youths, re-launch of ‘Gothrasarathi’, an initiative to help the children from remote tribal colonies reach schools, distribution of uniforms and lump sum grant to students in June itself , and a panchayat-level list of landless tribal people.