Addressing the education needs of pastoralists in South Asia

Pastoralist groups are widely distributed across South Asia but their lifestyles and educational needs are far less recognised than their counterparts in Africa.

Exact numbers are difficult to come by and the visibility of pastoralist and nomadic populations in regional education and livelihood policies is highly inconsistent. Nomads, for example, are recognised in the Afghan constitution but they are omitted from government and donor-supported development programming in practice.

Current patterns of regional development are designed for sedentary groups and often have negative impacts on pastoralists’ livelihoods. In India, for example, shrinking natural resources increasingly damage eco-systems on which pastoralists depend. Globalisation and urbanisation marginalise them socio- economically and make them vulnerable.

Policymakers tend to see pastoralism as an outmoded, rather than a rational, contemporary livelihood strategy. They believe pastoralists can benefit from development opportunities, including accessing educational provision, if they are settled. This approach has led to poor enrolment and retention of pastoralists in schools. Pastoralists are not resistant to the idea of education, but to becoming sedentary. Problems lie with the nature of state provision, rather than with pastoralists’ demands.

Educational provision needs to change to match pastoralists' needs

Pastoralist groups, however, are now looking at formal education with a new interest. They realise it can help them diversify their occupations and access new income-generating opportunities. Pastoralists are now aware that they have a right to education, which is linked to their right to vote and to participate in decision-making about policies that may affect them.

However, educational provision needs to change to match pastoralists’ needs. It must value their mobility and social identities, and respond flexibly to their future needs and hopes.

Experiments on various ways of providing formal education to pastoralists are fewer in South Asia than Africa. But, the region has some examples of innovative nongovernment practices that have tried to address pastoralists’ needs. These include mobile schools based on participatory needs identification, for instance:

• legal literacy education on migration for Van Gujjar families in northern India

 

• a community-run boarding school for Rabaris in western India.

 

This work, however, is not enough. Most non-government or community-based organisations face budget constraints and the sustainability of such projects becomes difficult as success generates increased demand.

Pastoralists’ educational inclusion is possible with effective strategies.

• Policymakers need to take a positive and holistic view of the social and economic value of pastoralism – and other mobile livelihood strategies (example for, river gypsies in Bangladesh or nomadic iron-smiths throughout South Asia).

 

• Education has to be seen within and delivered to suit a mobile lifestyle, instead of forcing people to leave such lifestyles.

 

• Education needs to be viewed as lifelong learning and has to include adult and legal literacies rather than focus narrowly on schooling. 

 

• States have to recognise their accountability to pastoralists’ human right to an education, and ensure that it is available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable. 

 

• Participatory and other research is needed to understand the educational needs of nomadic and migrant groups. 

 

• The needs of pastoralist women and girls who are ‘doubly’ invisible require extra attention.

 

Caroline Dyer
School of Politics and International Studies
(POLIS), University of Leeds,
Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK
T +44 113 3434402
c.dyer@leeds.ac.uk
www.polis.leeds.ac.uk