KOCHI: They are wanted everywhere, from households to multi-crore, multi-storey building construction sites across Kerala. But the authorities are turning a Nelson’s eye to the most important issue of ensuring proper education for their children.They are deprived of parental care during their formative period and proper school education. Kerala has an envious track record on the literacy campaign front in the state. But the migrant population remains outside the campaign orbit.Kerala has been seeing an increasing inflow of migrants. If the government records are anything to go by, Kochi alone has a migrant population of more than 9,000. But this can be a gross under representation as the records include only the labourers who are registered by their contractors. According to Sanjeev Kumar, a Congress worker, the Vathuruthy area in Kochi alone has a migrant population of around 20,000. Of these, there are around 2,000 people in the voter’s list of Ernakulam. The others have the voting right in their native state of Tamil Nadu.There are four Anganwadis to take care of the kids. For further education of their kids, there are some schools nearby.But most of the labourers from Tamil Nadu opt for their native state as the children will get education in Tamil medium and hostel facilities as most of them belong to the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe categories.“Besides, there are several other facilities for the children in the Tamil Nadu schools,” saidBut the children then get no parental attention as the parents have to be away in Kerala for earning a livelihood. If the children opt for parental care and continue to be in Kerala after the Anganwadi years, then they will not get Tamil-medium education.A recent trend suggests a larger flow of non-Tamil labourers into Kerala, says K K Krishnakumar of the Centre for Socio-Economic and Environmental Development, Kochi.“An increasing number of these labourers are from the north and the north-eastern parts of the country and there is a trend among them to bring in their families as well,” he says. As the number of migrants and their families grows, issues such as the education of their children become increasingly unavoidable. The education of the migrant population has been a growing concern not only at the state-level but also at the national-level.“As long as we are using their labour, we cannot neglect their rights. Now these people are considered some sort of use-and-throw commodities which you can dispose of once your work is done,” says Maithri Prasad of the Centre for Development Studies.“It is not difficult to have a separate division for the migrant students,” says K K Krishnakumar.The concept of Alternative and Innovative Education under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is another solution. This programme looks at the flexible academic systems and bridge courses for the special populations. “This can be implemented even among a group of 10 to 20 students. It has been implemented in small pockets in states like Andhra Pradesh,” says Ajith Kumar of the Centre for Socio-Economic and Environmental Studies, who works on the issue of migrant population. But everything depends on the political will.
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