Karnataka   

Koraga leaders score a victory of sorts, move the bureaucracy

MANGALORE: The Koraga tribal people in Dakshina Kannada district clinched a victory of sorts on Wednesday at a meeting with the chief executive officer of the zilla panchayat A.M. Kunjappa.

Mr. Kunjappa had promised community leaders that the Central Model Koraga Residential School in Madhya Padavu would soon be integrated with the district Education Department.

As they exited the meeting hall, the Koraga leaders were jubilant.

The school is managed by the Integrated Tribal Development Project (ITDP), which is under the Social Welfare Department. The Education Department has no hold over its affairs. Community leaders have for long been crying foul over the lack of facilities at the school and the arbitrary manner in which it was managed.

Another long-standing demand of the Koragas that only Scheduled Tribes students should be admitted to the school had been accepted by Mr. Kunjappa. He has directed the officers concerned to shift students belonging to non-tribal communities to other schools immediately.

The school was built specially for children of the Koragas who are one of the most socially backward communities in the district. This was done so that these children could get un-diverted attention. However, because of the shortage of Koraga and other Scheduled Tribe students, the school’s authorities had started admitting other students as well.

The controversy surrounding the unceremonious sacking of Ravindra — the school’s only Koraga teacher — was also put to rest by Mr. Kunjappa. Mr. Ravindra has been reinstated to his erstwhile position as the school’s Kannada teacher.

ITDP officer Satyanarayana Rao had sacked Mr. Ravindra in the previous academic year on the grounds that he was “spoiling the atmosphere of the school”. He was acting on the advice of certain teachers from the Koraga school who had alleged that Mr. Ravindra was inciting the students against them.

Students had told The Hindu at the height of the controversy (reported in these columns on April 18) that they were being subjugated by the other teachers and that Mr. Ravindra had actually come to their rescue.

The decision of Mr. Kunjappa has not gone down well with Mr. Satyanarayana who openly expressed his displeasure by making unpleasant gestures towards the Koraga leaders at the meeting.

Reacting sharply to Mr. Rao’s behaviour, Mr. Kunjappa admonished him in public. This resulted in a war of words between Mr. Rao and Mr. Kunjappa in full view of the media.

The Koraga leaders took this opportunity to launch a slew of allegations against Mr. Rao. They said that the problems of the community had worsened after he had taken over as the ITDP officer for the district. They alleged that he had never visited their settlements to find out their living conditions and said that he had not released the funds that had been allocated for their development schemes.

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