The role of Education on Socio-Economic Change and Empowerment of Mahali Women in Birbhum

Literacy and Education is considered as the main driving force of development for a nation. According to the Indian Census definition ‘Literacy’ means a person who can read and write a simple message in any language with understanding is considered literate’. In spite of many socio-economic securities provided to scheduled castes in the constitution and by the government, scheduled castes are still comparatively illiterate and less educated than the general category. This could be attributed to a variety of reasons such as early age marriage, high female illiteracy due to the importance of male children, child labour, superstition, dominance of higher castes, and deprivation from socio-economic status etc. Education is an important variable affecting demographic behaviour concerning marriage, fertility, mortality, migration as well and participation in the labour force. In a number of research studies, a clear-cut negative relationship has been established between the educational level of women and fertility. The age of females at marriage is also affected by the educational attainment of females. Even infant mortality is found to be affected by the educational status of the mother. The difference of Male and Female literacy is high, 29.3 (Male-55.6 and Female-26.3) (2001 Census, Office Registrar General, India). A Male-Female differential is more prominent among the S.C and S.T population. In this paper Sex Differences in literacy among General, S.C. and S.T. have been analysed in Rural and Urban Frames with reference to Mahali communities. The rate of literacy and its pattern obviously vary in rural and urban Bengal. Scheduled Tribes –Mahali are geographically, socially isolated and economically marginalized communities. In the post-independence period, sincere and concerted efforts were made for the economic and educational development of the Mahali Tribal. Despite these efforts, the performance of the Mahali tribes in education is much lower than the Scheduled Castes. As the studies on Mahalitribal education suggests that the policymakers approach paid little attention to culturally linked education. This has led to dropouts and directly impacted their overall educational status.