Ms. Annie Namala - NCDHR India (affiliated with Minority Rights Group)
Thank you very much for this opportunity. I would like to bring the issue of
discrimination that the Dalit community is facing in India.
I would like to state that the discrimination that the Dalit communities
face is of a particular nature, because of the belief and attitudes, and
un-touchability. In the provision of education we find two types of
discrimination. One by the states in its very provision, which includes
differential types of education at a cost of about 25 dollars for some
children a year, about 60 dollars for other children, for about 300-400
dollars for the third variety of children.
The state also fails to make the combination between the private and
public education where private education goes at a high cost that the
minority communities are not able to access. We would also like to bring
you a notice the presence of discrimination within the larger civil society
which gets reflected and reproduced at a school system at all levels. In
this whole process children, teachers, and the wider community are
engaged. As a few recommended measures, Mam, we would like to
suggest that there is a anti-discrimination check can be introduced into the
schooling process and that would be mandatory for all schools to
implement and report to at the monitoring levels.
We would also like to suggest, that there is a legislative frame to address
discrimination and a complaint mechanism, which is introduced into the
education system. As a third level, we would like to engage that the
school system engages in educated Dalit youth, who are in different parts
of the country. And would be part of the process providing education at all
levels.
We request that these recommendations are brought into the frame of the
current discussion and taken forward in the context of India.
Thank you, Mam.