With graduates left to sell beads, TN's Narikuravars are dropping out of school

Twelve-year-old V Jothi Nila and her younger brother V Jagan spend most of their waking hours playing with other children at the Narikuravar Colony near Manamathy in Tamil Nadu’s Kancheepuram district. Whenever time permits, they learn jewellery making from their father D Venkatesan.

Venkatesan deemed it necessary to train his children in beaded jewellery-making as he firmly believed they would inherit the family occupation like other youths from the Narikuravar community. To initiate the children into the family occupation, Venkatesan pulled them out from school three years ago.

The inability of several educated youths from the Narikuravar community to find respectable jobs has discouraged many parents like Venkatesan from sending their children to school. With many of these educated youths returning home to ancestral occupations like making beaded jewellery or tattooing, parents feel teaching children their traditional occupation at a young age is safer than “wasting” time on education.

Little to be done with a degree

“More than 15 youngsters have degrees in our colony. None of them could find a job and they ended up pursuing the family occupation of making and selling beaded jewellery. If these youths couldn’t get employment, then why should we waste our time by educating our children? If only we start teaching them to make beaded jewellery from a younger age and take them along with us to sell it, they would be at least capable of earning enough for a square meal when they grow up,” Venkatesan told The Federal.

Despite his distrust in education, Venkatesan occasionally allows his children to attend tuition classes conducted by teachers under the Tamil Nadu government’s ‘Illam Thedi Kalvi’ (Education at Doorstep) scheme to learn the basics. He believes nothing more than basics is going to help them anyway.

S Jarina from the Narikuravar colony in Mayiladuthurai district said she has lost faith in the education system.

“Just like everyone, I  believed that education would change our fate. But I was wrong and I realised it only after educating three of my children. My husband and I worked hard to save money for our children’s education. We took a huge loan and sought assistance from NGOs to educate our children. It has been years since three of my daughters completed their degrees, but none of them could find a white collar job and are now selling jewellery with me,” Jarina told The Federal.

Discouraged by the futile struggle of her daughters, Jarina said she didn’t encourage her son to continue with his studies when he wanted to drop out.

“If only I had not spent the money on their education, at least we would have proper food and clothes. Now, all my hard work has been wasted and I feel like a loser. That’s why I did not compel my son to continue with his studies when he wanted to quit. Education is nothing but a waste of time in our lives,” she added.

No examples, only ‘rotten apples’

S Rambha, who holds a B.Ed degree, said that even though she is hopeful of landing a job one day, the fact that she doesn’t have one even after two years of completing her education, keeps her from persuading her brother or anyone in the colony to study.

“People in my community take me and other graduates who end up doing our family business as bad examples. Whenever I speak about education, they argue that they are pulling their children out of schools as they don’t want them to waste time like me,” she told The Federal.

E Manikandan, a resident of the Narikuravar colony in Coimbatore, said he had had similar experiences.

“Across the state, parents are pulling their wards out of the school because almost no graduate from our community has managed to get any work and all of us have ended up pursuing our family occupation. Pulling children out of school during the COVID pandemic became easier. As schools were shut due to lockdowns, most of the children accompanied their parents to work,” he told The Federal.

Manikandan completed his MBA in 2012 and after a year of job hunting took over his father’s tattooing business. “The only improvement in my family business is that my father does not know how to tattoo names. I tattoo names as well because I am educated. This is how my hard-earned MBA degree is helping me now,” he said. He barely makes Rs 100 a week, he added.

Like many others in his community, Manikandan also believes that getting himself educated in the face of struggles has been a futile exercise.

Long, futile struggle

“My parents are not educated, so they couldn’t help me in any way. The most they could do was allow me to study. As they travel for work for days together, initially they were scared to leave me alone at home. But I persuaded them that I can cook and take care of myself. When I was younger, I believed that I could get out of poverty if I got a job in a reputed company and for that, I studied with determination. But, now I think I was too naïve to think that way,” he said.

Manikandan said he gave up on his hope of finding a job after a futile year of attending interviews in multiple companies. “Already my parents have spent a lot on me. I thought it would be unfair on my part if I continue to be dependent on them financially. So, I decided to work alongside my father, who was a tattooist,” he said.

At least 15 youngsters from his community, inspired by him, had taken up engineering, but now all of them are selling beaded jewellery after failing to get a decent job, said Manikandan.  “If at least one of the graduates gets a job, we would be able to convince all the parents to send their wards to schools and then to college. Now that we have become failures, we have become wrong examples to the future generation. They don’t want to waste time by going to school as they believe they will not get jobs just like us,” he explained.

Demand for ST quota

A Sakthivel, an engineering graduate from the community said the government should intervene and fulfil the community’s long standing demand of classifying it under the Scheduled Tribe category. This would enable its members to avail themselves of job opportunities under the ST quota.

“At present, we are classified under MBC and it is very difficult to compete with other (MBC) communities which enjoy better socio-economic standing. Unlike those communities, we cannot afford to study on our own without support from outside. None of our parents are educated and they have no awareness about the world outside their community,” he told The Federal.

Sakthivel further said he took the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission’s Group 4 examination and, in 2019, he missed the opportunity to grab a job by a whisker. Had he been covered under the ST quota, he would have made it, he rued.

“If only we could get some benefits and the reservation, we would be able to climb up and all we are seeking is just one opportunity,” he said.

“I also have to be careful not to reveal my identity. Because once others know that I belong to the Narikuravar community, I would be ill-treated and discriminated against. I could do nothing but stay away from them. But had I been in the category, I would have been able to file a case under the Scheduled Tribes (prevention of atrocities) Act against the offenders,” he added.

Sakthivel said, even though the state government has set up a Narikuravar welfare board, it has been functioning only on paper. Complaining that community members are unable to  enjoy any benefits through the board, he says his people prefer to sell their beaded jewellery.

Powerless, invisible, unheard

“We are originally semi-nomadic tribes and one of the oppressed communities. Even though we have settled at a place now, most of us stay in other villages and towns at least for a few months. Staying at home means no business. So, they hardly stay at home continuously for a week or so,” said M Sitha, founder of Narikuravar Education and Welfare Society (NEWS). For decades, the organisation has been demanding that the government include the community under the ST category.

She wondered what was stopping the Tamil Nadu government from classifying the community as ST. The same community is known by different names in other states such as Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra, where they enjoy the ST classification. They are all basically Narikuravars, are related to each other and often marry within their groups in other states, explained Sitha.

Pointing that in the place of 300 students, only 60 students are now studying in primary schools run by NEWS, Sitha told The Federal that parents take their wards with them when they go to other villages for work and she cannot stop them any longer. “For the situation to reverse, we definitely need help from the government,” she added.

“They usually live in small groups and they don’t have any political powers or even representation. As they are traditionally hunters and their skills are completely different, they cannot contribute much to society. So, they don’t get any attraction at all,” said K Natarajan, a board member of Vanavil School in Nagapattinam that has been educating children belonging to nomadic tribes.

Explaining that it is very difficult to uplift the community without government help, he said, if included under ST, they will at least get the basic benefits and opportunities to climb upwards. Pointing out that these days, seats under the reservation are left vacant if the eligible candidates are not found and reservation would definitely help the community, he said that Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes have 19 per cent of the total 69 per cent reservation in Tamil Nadu.

Despite several attempts, officials from the Tamil Nadu school education department were not available for a comment.

Little progress on legislative front

Following several representations, a Bill to include them in the Scheduled Tribe category was introduced in the Lok Sabha in 2016. But it has not seen any progress since then. Recently, the Tamil Nadu government again made a request to classify them as ST.

According to the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs, the criteria to include a community in ST are indications of primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolations, shyness of contact with the community at large and backwardness.

“The criteria are doing more harm to us than benefits. We, semi-nomadic tribes, started mingling with society only to sell beaded jewellery because hunting was prohibited in the country. Even now, we are largely isolated, discriminated against and backward in all aspects,” Sitha added.