Chhattisgarh seeks education package in Maoist-hit areas

RAIPUR - Admitting that unabated Maoist violence has hit its education system hard, the Chhattisgarh government has sought central aid in the form of a special package to revive it in six most affected districts, an official said Friday.

“The Chhattisgarh government has informed in written to the Indian government that Maoist violence has taken a heavy toll on education system in the state and the state government needs a package from the centre to bring the education system back on track, mainly in six worst-hit districts,” a senior education department official told IANS.

Chhattisgarh’s School Education Minister Brijmohan Agrawal submitted a letter to union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal in New Delhi Thursday and sought a special package for the five districts of Bastar region besides the western Rajnandgaon district.

Bastar is made up of Dantewada, Bijapur, Narayanpur, Bastar and Kanker districts. Police say the government has no presence in an estimated 450-500 villages of the region where 1,750 people have lost their lives in Maoist violence since 2005. Of the sprawling 40,000 sq km thickly forested interiors in Bastar, up to 25,000 sq km is intensively mined by the guerrillas.

“Agrawal told Sibal that Maoists had bombed a large number of school buildings and teachers were reluctant to attend schools fearing threat to their lives. Even the government is finding it tough to construct new school buildings because of the unabated violence,” the official said.

The minister also told Sibal that Chhattisgarh needed a special package to bring the education system back on track, specially in the Bastar region and Rajnandgaon bordering Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district.

The Chhattisgarh minister suggested that the central government should fund a plan in troubled districts to open 500-seater primary schools near police stations and main roads and in block headquarters with lodging facilities for students as well as for teachers so that students of interior areas where schools were bombed, can be accommodated.

Agrawal advised that the central government can also look into the Chhattisgarh government’s suggestions for providing special incentives to teachers of violence-hit areas and covering them under special insurance plan to inspire them to defy Maoists threats and attend schools regularly.

Sources said that Agrawal spelt out basic difficulties before Sibal which the state government is facing to implement the Right to Education Act in insurgency-riddled pockets.

Some officials say here in private that the government is wary of implementing the act, which makes primary education free and compulsory for every child in the 6-14 age group as Maoists command a massive forested locality in Bastar region and Rajnandgaon district.

Bastar has witnessed several deadly attacks in recent years. On April 6, the rebels carried out their biggest ever attack on policemen in Dantewada district April 6, massacring 76 security personnel, 75 of them from the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF). On May 17, 31 people were killed in the same district in a powerful landmine blast that hit a civilian bus.