State of Tribal Education in West Bengal: An Empirical Study on Santal Tribe of Eastern India

The state has initiated several programmes to improve the literacy levels of the tribal people of India. Various state governments have also implemented different schemes and programmes to improve the literacy levels of tribes in their states. Another pertinent issue for tribal people is a vast gender gap in the literacy achievement levels between men and women and boys and girls. It is due to the prevailing state of societal apparatus, economic conditions of the people, area, resource access and political state of affairs. The state of West Bengal has 40 distinct tribal groups, and the Santal tribe is one among them. The state has initiated several schemes to improve education levels, but the desired results concerning tribal education are not satisfactory in West Bengal. This article attempts to discuss the state of tribal education and how far the schemes of education benefitted Santal tribal people to achieve their educational attainment in the study villages of the Bolpur region of West Bengal. Our article primarily depends on empirical data gathered from the Santal tribal community of the Bolpur area of Birbhum district, West Bengal.