Visit to Telangana Residential Schools

India as a country has experienced numerous social movements like civil rights, women’s movement, human rights movement, Dalit and tribal movements. A considerable lot of them are against the social practices which are untouchability, discrimination based on caste and atrocities against Dalit, tribal and minority communities. The Dalit community had faced tremendous discrimination over centuries which had never got the opportunity to live a life of a dignity. Indian great leader like Mahatma Jyotirao Phule and Dr. B. R Ambedkar have given their lives for the empowerment and equality of Dalit community.

Under the united government of Sri N.T Ramarao, Andhra Pradesh in 1984 came up with providing quality education to the poor Schedule Caste and Schedule tribe and Other Backward Caste students by establishing the residential school. At present, the Telangana government is focused on the good infrastructure and all-round development of the student in every aspect.

Telangana Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society (TSWREIS) was set up Under the Ministry of Schedule Caste Development, Telangana. Currently, there is around five hundred residential school were set up to provide education to the marginalized children especially Schedule Caste children in the rural Telangana.

There are residential schools in the Siddipet district for the girls in Mettapalli. Many of the students stay in the hostel and very few come as day scholars nearby the villages. Facilities like primary medical, food nutritionist, RO plant for drinking and also sports field. As the observation of the school, the infrastructure and the classroom arrangement are good. The whole campus is under surveillance which is directly attached to the principal office.  There is a staff nurse who takes care of primary health, if there is some emergency then they are referred to Siddipet. Even all the staff are women including teachers.

 Residential school for boys in Gurralagondi village which is 17 km from the Siddipet with twenty teachers out of which seven are female and thirteen are male teacher including the hostel manager. There are extra workers who are on contract basis for the cleaning. Apart from that, they don’t have any drinking water facilities, for now, they are taking water supply from the nearby tank for drinking purpose. After the interaction, we came to know that the building they are using is the hostel itself. The government has sanction 13 crores in last May and 7 acres of land to build a school outside the village. One of the interesting things we came across that the student are fluently speaking English and they were more comfortable with that. The school has the same structure of management and many facilities are available for the students. As well as there are many students from Hyderabad. The selection process is done through the admission test after qualifying the student are been referred to the residential schools

By Bodhi R Chakma