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THE Annual State of Education Report (ASER), 2006 put together by Pratham, once again proves that despite the self-congratulatory mood marking our educational planners, we have some distance to travel before we can honestly claim that all our children are in school and actually learning.

Among the many deprived of this basic constitutional right are children of migrants, not the NRIs or even those forced to migrate to cities in search of livelihoods, but the ‘invisible’ seasonal, rural to rural migrants. It is both intriguing and distressing that notwithstanding the work of social anthropologists like Jan Breman, the phenomenon of ‘footloose labour’ continues to escape the attention of policy-makers.

The study, Locked Home Empty Schools: The Impact of Distress Seasonal Migration on the Rural Poor, Zubaan, 2006 by Smita, with help of some stunning and disturbing photographs by Prashant Panjiar, draws attention to one of the most neglected fallouts of this process – the impact on children. Distress seasonal migration – millions of families forced to leave their homes and villages for several months each year in search of livelihoods – results in families being uprooted and their children forced to dropout of school, thereby foreclosing the only available opportunity they might have to break this cycle, generation after generation.

The scale of this migration is growing – a grim reminder that despite recent GDP growth rates approximating nine per cent, not all of India is shining. Further, the number of children below 14 years of age affected may already be close to nine million, seriously undermining the constitutional guarantee of ‘education for all’ and questioning the claims of numerous schemes promising universal elementary education. Also insufficiently realized is that seasonal, unlike permanent, migrants, because they have no stable residence, fall outside the purview of all our social security schemes. The footloose are not only invisible and voiceless, they in effect remain disenfranchised.

There are, as Amartya Sen in a perceptive Foreword points out, two distinct aspects of distress seasonal migration that need to be distinguished. To start with is the issue of magnitude and its causation. While migration in itself may well be a search for superior opportunities, distress migration is an effort to deal with local deprivation and unless we can efficaciously attend to the causes of distress, it will continue. The only thing worse in such a situation is the inability to migrate. But, while this foundational task of improving rural conditions cannot be addressed in the short-run, surely we should be able to mitigate its worst consequences, particularly the impact on children.

Years back, the late Meera Mahadevan and the organization she helped set up, Mobile Creches, initiated a range of activities with children of migrant workers at work sites in cities – setting up temporary shelters and play sites for children, supplementary nutrition and health care, even rudimentary efforts at education, but above all, providing a safe and caring environment. While laudable, the effort remained small, and in the absence of requisite resources and volunteers, was unable to respond to the learning needs of children.

What Smita documents with considerable empathy is the work of four NGOs – Janarth in Maharashtra, Setu in Gujarat, and Vikalpa and Lok Drishti in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh in setting up saksharshalas, hostels for children in villages of migrant families. The effort is to involve the village community, who with the assistance of NGO volunteers, provide a secure environment where children can stay behind even as their parents are forced to temporarily outmigrate. This way, the children are not forced to drop out of school, and while nothing can compensate for the absence of parents and family, with at least their siblings and neighbours around, the children escape dislocation.

Each of the NGOs whose work is discussed bring unique insights and styles of work into the programme. Common to all, however, is the focus on children and their needs as also adding to their learning and skill levels. These efforts have helped strengthen community bonds in otherwise fragmenting villages, driving home the lesson that children are our collective responsibility. Hopefully, a combination of Mobile Creche and saksharshala type initiatives at both the point of origin (villages) and work sites can go some way in addressing issues of discontinuity in learning environments.

More than adding to our knowledge of migrants and their life-world, this study may also impel educationists into examining afresh and fine-tuning their existing schemes for UEE. If only our policy-makers can learn to be less rigid about schemes and norms for financial support, we may be better positioned to respond to the wide variations in the requirements of different groups, most of all those who consistently fall within the cracks.

Harsh Sethi