You are posted as a District Education Officer (DEO) in a Maoist affected district. You have been specifically given the responsibility to work on the literacy mission. After reading the education reports and doing field visits, you find that the number of out of school children has increased drastically and the motivation among students and teachers is also low. While certain basic infrastructure is already in place, the major hurdle in attracting students to these schools include the attitude of inhabitants towards education and the security risks involved in sending children to schools. Given the situation, answer the following questions: (a) Analyse the reasons behind such an attitude. 20 (b) As a DEO, what are the steps that you would take in order to increase the school attendance and change the prevalent attitude of inhabitants towards education?

(2) Maoist Affected area People (3) DEO, (4) Nation at large.

(a) Reason for such an attitude lack of motivation among students & teachers can be due to two reasons

• Threat or fear of maoist forces
• Trust deficit between government & people in such areas. ↳ Due to economic & geographic disparity & underdevelopment people in LWE areas are disenchanted from government & trust deficit appears which are taken advantage by maoist forces & radicalise people → thereby attitude of people changes & become alienated

Thus, attitude is because of failure of government in doing development accentuated by maoist fear & radicalisation.

• Also, inhabitation wrong attitude towards education → may be due to insensitive behaviour of officials with tribals. ↳ Such mai-baap culture have given bad image of education & is seen as erosion of values by tribals.

(b) As a DEO, the approach should be to bring back childrens in school by persuading parents & build back the trust bridge between parents & governments so as to allay fear & influence of maoist forces.

Steps

• Will persuade parents, - will empathise with their situation, & will try to convince them to send childrens to schools.
• for this, they will be awared about need of education in ones life.
• Will try to use some rational mindsets from community or NGO's who have influence among them. or teachers to persuade them.
• Security fears will be tackled by adequate forces deployment & vigilance ↳ local intelligence can be created so as to get hints of any adverse incident priorly.
• long term bond has to be created to defeat purpose of maoist forces, thus Parents will also be persuaded to join schools & attain basic education as this will not only help them but also their children in future.
• Regular police, Administration