Ol Chiki Santali Script dwindling prestige of the

regional languages in a wider context of

educational reforms.
Prof.Aswini Kumar Mishra
Professor in English,
HOD, H & S
Indur Institute Of Engg & Tech
Siddipet,Medak (Dist), A.P.
[email protected],
[email protected]
91+9849625840
As part of a larger project on the history of language movements and
anguage politics in Orissa, the focus of the present paper is on the role of
a so-called tribal language in education. During the historical Oriya
language movement, the implementation of Oriya as a medium of
instruction in education, which was initiated by the Oriya elite and
considerably supported by the British administration, meant one of the
most significant steps for the Oriya speaking population in their fight
against the dominance of Bengali in the public sector, where all posts in
Orissa were reserved for Bengali speakers, Oriya being declared as a ere
dialect of Bengali. As the movement aimed at the empowerment of the
language with literature, literary history, journals and intellectual
networks, the first step meant the writing of textbooks in the Oriya
language since the main argument against Oriya as an official language
in education had been the complete lack of educational materials in
comparison to the much better equipped Bengali. If we take a look at the
present situation of a tribal language such as Santali in its attempts to
secure its survival and upgrade its status against the dominating regional
languages around it, the case appears to be much more complex. At the
first glance, here, too, it seems that without a proper status in primary
education, the language is bound to be invaded by “quality” word
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borrowing and its working range more and more to be reduced to a mere
“kitchen” or “home” language. Language activists here, therefore, argue
in favour of an implementation of Santali in the primary sector in order
to ensure a sound basis of spoken and written knowledge in this
language, thereby securing its dynamic growth and wider functionality
within the community.
Ol Chiki is alphabetic, and does not share any of the syllabic properties
of the other Indic scripts. It contains 30 letters and five basic diacritics. It
has 6 basic vowels and additional three vowels are generated using
Gahla Tudag The Ol Chiki letters are arranged in a matrix of 6 by 5, in
which the six letters in the first column of the matrix are vowels, and the
rest 24 letters are consonants. However, the five letters of the third
column represent dual consonants, and this, eventually, helps to
represent 29 consonants with the help of diacritic Ahad. Ol Chiki gives 5
basic diacritics, and the combination of diacritics Mu Tudag and Gahla
Tudag gives rise to another diacritic, called Mu-Gahla Tudag. The
matrix of Ol Chiki letters are listed with transliteration of alphabets,
with pronounciation in brackets and their sounds in
bracelets.

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The above table gives Ol Chiki letters, their transliterations, their
pronunciation and the corresponding phonetic alphabets(IPA). Phonetic
alphabets are given to understand the correct pronunciations of Ol Chiki
letters
The latest National Curriculum Framework for School Education gives
rather cloudy recommendations on the use of the mother tongue in
education, which should be “ideally identical with the state language”,
and should be “ideally, a medium of instruction at all stages of school
education, but at least on the elementary level”. In the case of those
students whose mother tongue is different from the state language or
regional language, it is suggested that “the regional language may be
adopted as a medium only from the third standard onward”. As we can
see, in some states the problem of defining a dominant regional language
is still not settled as is evident from the highly politicized debates on the
hegemony of Konkani or Marathi in Goa (where both have become
compulsory in primary levels), or the special situation of the North-
Eastern states that have a majority of tribal languages but no
predominant regional language and therefore generally opted for
English. And even if the official language of the state is identical with
the regional language of the majority, there remains the problem of
plurilingual communities residing within a given state, as for example in
Orissa with its great diversity of tribes and language families. All of the
tribal languages in Orissa however remain in the minority against the
dominant Oriya language group, and have no official status to demand
their use as a medium of instruction in schools.

State politics reflect these vague directions regarding language issues

and repeat the tendency to treat education in the mother tongues, if it is
practiced at all, as a transitory affair, that only serves to overcome the
shortcomings of the tribal learners until a complete integration into the
lingual mainstream is facilitated. In Orissa, with its 62 tribal
communities, where of 314 blocks, there are 118 blocks with more than
50% tribals which come under Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) areas, there are no

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binding government policies concerning the medium of instruction in
tribal areas, the final decision on which is actually left to the block
administration and the schools themselves. One can easily guess that a
systematic support of the existing tribal mother tongues will hardly
figure among the major interests of the state government, which
naturally wishes to avoid the administrative costs of implementing
mother tongue instruction for a multiplicity of minority languages.

Given the complexity of the tribal learners’ problems in primary

education that lead to the early rejection of formal education as a whole,
one of the most important approaches seeks to overcome the divide
between the home and the school atmosphere, which as a rule, co-exist
as two separate worlds with hardly any meeting points. Tribal children
have an important role to play in their families’ economic set-up, as they
take care of siblings, graze the cattle, collect forest products, assist in
household chores etc.; therefore, their absence at home creates additional
problems for the parents apart from the costs involved as the
educationary stage goes up. The children in turn resent being confined
and disciplined indoors in school buildings, and they are left completely
untouched by the alien course contents taught predominantly out of
books, in a language they cannot understand and by teachers who treat
them with a condescending attitude. A number of remedies to bridge the
gap between the two cultures that clash in elementary schooling are
presently researched and applied, concerning mainly the preparation of a
teaching in the mother tongue including the use of revised text-books
(and questioning the predominance of book-teaching generally);
secondly, it concerns the special training and close supervision of
teachers posted in tribal areas; thirdly, it aims at a positive recognition of
the culture of work among tribal children to prevent their alienation from
home.

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As part of a different pedagogy involving more playful and appealing
teaching methods, the urgent need for additional textbooks in tribal or
minority mother tongues has long been recognized, in order to relate the
core curriculum with the environment and the cultural context of the
children. The gap between home and school environment has to be
bridged by textbooks that offer the curriculum and exercises in the home
language for at least the first two standards.

Accordingly, the Orissa Primary Education Programme Authority

(OPEPA) has been in the last years active in the process of developing a
complete new stock of bilingual primers and reading material in a range
of tribal languages, such as Saora, Kui, Kuvi, Juang, Bonda, Koya,
Santali among others, the script adopted for all of them being Oriya. The
production of bilingual textbooks or reference works is also
commissioned by other institutions like the Central Institute of Indian
Languages (CIIL) or the State Resource Centre for Adult Education
(SRCAE) in the frame of general literacy campaigns. The organized
research, production, distribution and implementation of these primers is
however another gigantic task the results of which at present, leave
much to be desired. The core curriculum matter is generally adapted to
the familiar surroundings of the children and is sought to be in
congruence with the vocabulary of the respective mother tongues; it
further seeks to recognize different systems of knowledge transmission
by songs, riddles, story-telling and memorizing. In the same lines,
educational NGOs like Agragamee put a lot of stress on the development
of adequate course material that take into account the socio-economic
situation of the learners, with the foremost intention that they should not
be made to feel inferior about their culture, language and practices they
know from home. Similarly, in various NGO and Government
conducted projects, the need for special bilingual bridge courses has
been recognized which would ideally commence even at the pre-nursery
level, and later be used between primary and secondary levels.

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As even the best textbooks are wasted in the hands of indifferent and
unskilled teachers, all concerned authorities and organizations recognize
the urgent need for a special training of teachers for tribal areas.
Training programmes are prepared and conducted by the Academy of
Tribal Dialects and Culture (ATDC) , in cooperation with the OPEPA,
as well as by the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes Research and
Training Institute (SCSTRTI). However, even teachers of batches that
had been trained in special courses on anthropology, pedagogy and
language, are reported to not take their work seriously once posted in
remote areas, as they hope the posting to be transitory and they are not
controlled by any efficient monitoring agency.

In fact, the lack of rigorous supervision is the weakest point of

educational administration of the tribal areas. The Education Department
of the Govt. of Orissa has created 377 posts of Sub- Inspectors of
Schools, and at least two Sub- Inspectors have been provided to every
block, but in many cases, an “unholy alliance” between the absent
teachers and the S.I. of Schools can be observed in covering up the non-
performance of teachers, forging of certificates and the complete neglect
of village schools . As in many rural areas of India, the employment of
Shiksha Karmis (Sikhya Karmi in Oriya), i.e. members of the local
community who have received a basic education and are briefly trained
as elementary teachers, helps to cope with the huge demand for teachers
that are familiar with local languages and customs, and also prevents to a
certain extent the exodus of educated people away from their tribal
background; out of a number of reasons however this and similar grass-
root schemes can be no substitute for a fundamentally revised education
programme, especially as it paves the way for a two-class system where
the privileged are taught by “proper” teachers whereas others are left to
the care of less-qualified, less-paid and possibly little motivated staff,
just in order to polish the official figures. From the parents’ viewpoint,
however, the concentration on the tribal mother tongue in education is
greeted with little enthusiasm. In many cases, children are sent to school
only under great constraints, and the time spent there has to
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lead to quick results in terms of employment chances. The hierarchical
order of languages makes parents opt for the language that holds the
highest possible position, as the proficiency in the regional languages
(plus Hindi and English), promises the best results in the ever growing
competition on the urban job-markets. In their view, studying the
language “that is anyhow spoken at home” was superfluous and would
only lead to further disadvantage for their children. This rejection of
one’s own mother tongue in education is part of a more complex
problem that arises with the grossly exaggerated ideas of what education
can do for the job opportunities of tribal children, by which teachers and
administrators generally persuade people in tribal areas to join schools.
If one however looks at the deplorable condition of the educated or semi
educated tribal youths who are unqualified for proper jobs and therefore
remain unemployed or work in inferior workplaces, and are living in
miserable quarters in towns, the often heard verdict by parents and
teachers: “They have become useless” holds true in a double sense,
as they are not only unfit as wage-earners, but have become equally
unqualified for the traditional occupations of the village, apart from now
considering work in the agricultural sector below their dignity.
Compared to the village level, in school, they might have acquired
sophisticated habits in dressing and life-style and become an additional
burden to their families on which they look down upon. These youths
are full of resentment and frustration, as they are completely
disillusioned with the inflated promises that education was the gateway
to a more exciting and financially independent life in urban
surroundings.

To keep up the dignity of labour that is inherent to the life concept in a

tribal village, forms therefore a crucial part in the more recent
educational concepts of NGOs as well as of government authorities. The
guidelines of Sikshasandhan, a resource center for education with eight
consortium member organizations , accordingly propagate programmes
such as “Learning while earning”, where children are taught to read and
write along with their work. Income generation activities on the campus
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itself are useful to raise school funds and enhance the children’s
confidence in their manual and economic skills. Vocational training for
children includes processing of agro-products and forest products,
nursery raising, grafting, fruit processing, gardening, mat making etc.
The relevance and marketability of the produce is of highest importance
as can be seen from the experiences in Ashram Schools, where children
(boys) are usually uniformly trained in spinning and weaving, even if
they are from communities that are traditionally not engaged in this
work nor come from areas where cotton is grown; or they are
superficially trained in gardening by town-bred teachers, when the
agricultural knowledge of their parents at home would be far superior.
Children thus trained are almost certain to abandon these crafts once
they have left school. Ashram Schools insist on vegetarianism when the
children’s home diet includes meat and fish, and instead of training them
in fowl-keeping or fish-farming, a sense of guilt is instilled in them
concerning their sinful practices. Education cannot be reduced to literacy
alone, and therefore, progressive organizations would adapt their
training measures to the children’s immediate surroundings, and seek to
educate the children in all reaches of life; that could extend to holding
medical camps that help to create an awareness for basic healthcare and
medication even among children. Co- and extra-curricular activities
involve parents and the village community to a much higher degree than
usual, employing the traditional love for singing and dancing in common
festivities, apart from including them in the establishing and maintaining
of the school or camp premises by voluntary services (shramdaan).
Smaller siblings have to be taught simultaneously at Balwadis and
Anganwadis to allow the elders’ regular attendance. The use of the
mother tongue, too, is sought to be kept on a priority basis in elementary
teaching and communication without giving any attention to the
implementation of tribal scripts, as neither the parents nor the teachers
consider it important. The preceding general remarks on tribal education
had to reach beyond the problem of language, as language in education
can not be treated as an isolated issue. To understand the case of the
promotion of Santali in Orissa, a view into the diverging interests of
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administrators, teachers, tribal language activists, parents and the
learners themselves is necessary: The following case study of the
implementation of the Santali script Ol Chiki in primary and adult
education will be presented to show in some detail how the educational
problems referred to above are intertwined with administrational,
lingual, cultural and political issues.

As mentioned earlier, an independent script was devised for Santali ,

which in the meanwhile has developed into a fairly established medium
of communication even in print. It was initially designed to suit the
special linguistic requirements of the Mundari languages and to provide
a single, unifying script for Santali, which is otherwise noted down
either in Roman, Bengali, Oriya or Devanagari letters. The Ol Chiki
alphabet is organized along the Roman model, i.e. it is alphabetic (no
matra-system for vocals) and does not share any of the syllabic
properties of the neighbouring scripts; the grouping of the consonants
into categories however resemble the varga-system of Indo-Aryan
scripts. Some of the letters have pictorial character, and the whole script
is in fact quite learner friendly, also for children, as the shapes of the
letters are not arbitrary, but reflect the names for the letters, which are
words, usually the names of objects. The ASECAs as the main
organization to promote the Santali language and script, run extensive
teachers training programmes, mostly conducted in camps or evening
classes, to propagate especially the knowledge and use of the script in
Santal-populated areas. One of these week-long training programmes
would encompass however much more than a mere script-training, and
aims at providing the teachers with the full literary, cultural and
historical background of Santal identity. The script thus has become the
symbol of much higher values and it serves much more sophisticated
purposes than only a means for communication. More detailed course
syllabi are designed by the ASECA Board of Santali Education of
Mayurbhanj for various secondary and higher course programmes such
as “Ol Itun Teachers Training Course (equivalent to Matriculation

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Standards of General Education)”, “Studies in Santali Language and
Literature for +3 levels”, “Bachelor of Santali Literature in English, Pass
and Honrs. (B.S.L.)”etc. Without going into further details of the
respective elaborate syllabi it is already evident, to what considerable
extent Santali studies have been standardized, institutionalized and
organized, something that is unthinkable in any other tribal language in
Orissa. Inspite of large-looming financial constraints and a rather erratic
support by the State Education Department, the ASECA network is still
in the position to represent and work for a larger section of the educated
Santal community, not only in Orissa. It was one of the main bodies
which assidiously demanded the implementation of the script in the
primary sector, apart from expanding Ol Chiki-training for adults and
teachers, from around 1986 onwards. In response to this, from 1991
onwards, the Department of Education of Orissa finally decided to
introduce the “teaching of Santali in Ol Chiki script on an experimental
basis, as an additional language at the primary stage in 30 Primary
Schools of Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar and Sundargarh districts”. As follow-
ups, teachers were selected, Ol Chiki primers prepared and the teaching
commenced from May, 1992. As there were persistent demands from
Santal Organizations such as ASECA, AISWA, SBM, All India Santal
Council or AOOSU, to extend this to other primary schools with high
concentration of Santal pupils, a pilot study of some of the schools was
prepared by the ATDC.

The study was presented at a meeting on 9.1.2000, organized by

OPEPA, to which tribal leaders, primer writers, NGOs, Linguists and
Government Officials were invited. On account on both the problematic
findings of the ATDC report and the demanding attitude of the Santal
leaders, no consensus could be achieved in this meeting. It was felt by
the representatives of educational organizations that the prestigious and
controversial language issue had completely overshadowed all
discussions concerning the practical levels of education for the around
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70.000 Santal children in Orissa.In fact, the production of Santali
primers by the DPEP was stopped as their script being Oriya was
vehemently opposed by the Santal leaders. In this case, the politics of
the language movement clearly had proved to be counterproductive as
the relation between the Government bodies and the Santal authorities
have come to a virtual standstill. Before some points of the pilot study
shall be presented here it has to be made clear, that the ATDC, although
it supports the cause of the minority languages as a governmental
institution, is in general not sympathetic to the introduction of tribal
scripts. In the ATDC's view, the recognition of Ol Chiki functioned
more as a propaganda term than it referred to the actual issue concerning
the Santali script. First of all, the schools in remote tribal areas that were
inspected “lacked minimum facilities”, with unsufficient rooms and
teachers, no blackboards, no mid-day meals, no drinking water, no
toilets etc., something that is unfortunately not at all specific to the Ol
Chiki-issue. Teachers were found to teach two classes and more, or two
teachers teaching five classes, often in one or two rooms. This situation
made the teaching of Santali in Ol Chiki nearly impossible. All of the
teachers employed to teach Ol Chiki had ompleted courses by the
ASECA and held the respective certificates, most of them had at least
matric qualification. None of them however had undergone the
necessary two years C.T. (Certified Teachers’) training. So they were
first employed as Sikhya Karmis and only after their C.T. training, their
services were regularized.

However, during their two years absence, no substitute Ol Chiki teachers

were appointed, resulting in a severe damper effect on the once
commenced studies. Moreover, no additional posts were created for the
Ol teachers, and they were posted in existing vacancies with the result,
that they were required to teach Ol Chiki in addition to all other subjects.
In this situation the teachers had hardly any time to teach Ol Chiki at all,
and in one case, one Ol Chiki teacher was found managing five classes
alone. It is also critically remarked in the report, that one of the major
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objectives to demand the introduction of Ol Chiki had been apparently
the creation of jobs for unemployed Santal youths trained by the
ASECAs. In the view of the investigators, once these youths had been
posted, their enthusiasm for the cause of Ol Chiki had obviously
disappeared quickly as they had “relapsed” into functioning as ordinary
teachers. As for the textbooks, a similarly sobering picture evolves.
Textbooks were initially prepared for class I and II and published by the
Government. But unlike textbooks for other subjects that are distributed
free of cost for tribal students, these had to be paid for. Also they were
found to be ill-prepared by the investigators of the report. As they had
always been in short supply and were altogether discontinued after 1995,
not a single copy of these textbooks was to be found in the schools
during the investigation.

In contrast to the teachers’ statement that they and their wards were
strongly in favour of teaching Santali through Ol Chiki, the parents’
view differed considerably. About 20% parents who were interviewed
and given questionnaires, were not in favour of their wards learning Ol
Chiki. The rest 80% “was found to be totally unaware of all these facts”.
While the teachers claim to teach Ol Chiki, students denied that they
were taught in Ol Chiki.35 Many students complained that they faced
difficulties in learning Ol Chiki after having mastered the Oriya
alphabet. As against the predominantly rural schools of Mayurbhanj and
Keonjarh, in the more urbanized areas of Sundargarh district around
Rourkela, the parents, teachers and students were found to be “highly
detribalized and urbanized”. Learners of these groups were definitely
more interested in learning Oriya and English, and considered learning
their own language as secondary as it was “unnecessary and took their
valuable time” in view of the strong competition.

The report ends with several suggestions, i.e. pointing out the need for
periodic monitoring and evaluation of experimental schemes for
introducing teaching in tribal scripts. Teaching material had to be
provided free of cost, not only for the initial stages of learning, but even
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more importantly, as follow-up readers and supplementary material to
consolidate the knowledge in the script. It suggests also the financial
support of the organizations that did the “pioneering work” in this field,
and these should be asked to cooperate with the Government in this
regard.

From this remark it is not clear whether the ASECAs are to be included
in the “pioneering institutions” that should be supported. When the
Secretary of the ASECA Rairangpur was asked about any financial
support from the side of the Education Department, he declared that the
work of the ASECAs was tolerated by the Government and supported to
a certain extent, but that they existed without regular official grants, and
were in fact financed with great difficulties by donations and member
fees. After the outcome of the above mentioned meeting, it is further
doubtful to what extent the cause of Ol Chiki will be carried on by the
Orissa Government in future.

But apart from the practical suggestions the pilot study gives for an
improvement of the Ol Chiki teaching, which by and large concerns
problems not specific to the tribal script issue (as even the scarcity of
adequate textbooks is no exception in other educational sectors), the
report does not react to the most startling observation: the obvious
ignorance and indifference on the side of the parents and pupils towards
the controversial “language and script issue”, which n fact might be the
saddest aspect of all, apart from the multitude of technical
mismanagement in the planning and programme activities from higher
up, both from the Government side as well as from the Santal
authorities. The dilemma the tribal learners are facing becomes only all
too visible here: Whereas it is an undeniable truth that the disrespect by
which the tribal mother tongue is treated by teachers and offIcials in

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primary education is one of the major factors responsible for the
exceptionally high dropout rates of tribal children, the imposition of the
mother tongue (plus script!) in turn is perceived as an instrument of
further marginalization by the learners, who feel they are put to an even
more disadvantaged position in view of the additional language burden,
as they will eventually have to cope with three languages:

Oriya, Hindi and English. The introduction of the tribal mother tongue is
acceptable for the learners only as an initial bridge medium of
instruction; if it extends to a full course including script, grammar and
literature, hardly any learner is willing to devote much time for it,
especially as no job market is available for this specialized knowledge.
Yet, as most experiments confirm especially in remote rural areas, the
use of well designed primers in the tribal mother tongue (written in the
respective regional script the student is learning anyhow), taught by
motivated and committed teachers of the same community, is one of the
most promising methods to overcome the crucial initial barriers tribal
children face in getting acquainted with the environment of formal
education in schools generally, giving them first a solid foundation in
their mother tongue and thereby, instilling enough confidence in them
for the study of any other language later on. These approaches can
perhaps not serve gigantic tasks such as securing the survival of a
minority language, but on a much more pragmatic and human level, they
attempt to inculcate a sense of belonging in the children concerning their
cultural background incorporated in their mother tongue, instead of
making them feel resentful and inferior about it from the very start.

As for the promotion of the script and higher studies in Santali, these
must be obviously preserved for the sectors of adults’ and teachers’
training, as the target group undoubtedly consists predominantly of an
already educated, bilingual or trilingual and privileged section of the
Santal. The status of the Ol Chiki script as a significant identity marker

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of the Santal community cannot be denied and all efforts by the Santal
elite to promote its use in print, communication and literature should be
felicitated; its imposition in primary education without connecting it to
job prospects however can amount to a positive discrimination of the
tribal learner and prove even counterproductive as far as the love for
one’s mother tongue is concerned. The practical use of Ol Chiki so far
seems largely constricted to its appellative function; it appears on
pamphlets, inscriptions of all sorts, greeting cards, monuments,
headlines, flags and demonstration banners, brochures, audio cassette
covers etc., and since it is comparatively easy to read, it serves as a
valuable tool of cultural self-assertion. On the literary level, several
small journals are brought out in Ol Chiki, and a substantial stock of
education material both for learners and teachers has been prepared over
the years, too. Important authors in Santali however largely stick to their
respective regional scripts for their novels, shortstories, poetry and
dramas (especially Bengali and Devanagari), which are then, if
necessary, transcribed into Ol Chiki for certain publications; for that
purpose, an automatic computer transcription programme for Ol Chiki
into and out of several regional scripts (Devanagari, Bengali, Oriya,
Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam etc.) and Roman has been successfully
developed in1998.

But even the pursuit of secondary and higher studies needs a certain
incentive concerning their applicability on the job market, and it is
precisely here that the demand to introduce Ol Chiki teaching in primary
schools gains its actual importance (as already assumed by the
investigators of the pilot study): the official recognition of Ol Chiki
would result in an enormously increased demand for Ol Chiki teachers in
Santal-populated areas, including the facilitation of enlarged training and
supervising capacities. In neighbouring Jharkhand, the struggle among
the nine recognized tribal languages (and especially among the
prominent ones as Santali, Mundari, Kurukh and Ho) to achieve a higher
status as official languages is based exactly on this concern: if for
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example Santali as the largest tribal language of Jharkhand would be
officially recognized, two Santali teachers each would have to be
appointed additionally for the existing 25.000 primary schools, by which
a tremendous job market would be created and with it, a huge political
potential concerning the distribution of these jobs. To get an impression
of the situation at a higher level, we again turn to Jharkhand since
unfortunately, in Orissa there are no University Courses for Tribal
Languages as yet. The Department of Regional and Tribal Languages of
Ranchi University offers M.A. studies in Santali, among nine other tribal
languages, and presents a detailed and thoughtfully prepared syllabus .
Since the beginning in 1984, 51 M.A. students have passed in all. There
are 30 seats (another figure names 50 students for M.A. in Santali) for
every language in nine groups. But due to the uncertain job situation, the
number of students in these studies, too, could be seen
declining as the job market extends hardly beyond the academic circles.
This situation could only be changed with the upgraded status of the
tribal languages that is presently discussed in Jharkhand. In view of the
rivaling tribal groups however, it is unlikely that one language will be
substantially preferred before the others, and at the most, the nine tribal
languages will be raised to the status of associate languages next to
Hindi and English. The former Prime Minister, although himself a
Santal, showed little ambitions to engage himself in the promotion of
Santali (or any language issue for that matter), and the Santal leadership
in general is divided on the issue of language and script implementation;
even if latest developments show that certain measurements for the
upgrading of the tribal languages have been initiated by the Jharkhand
government , here as in Orissa, it remains to be seen as to how far new
policies can comply with the harsh ground realities in the educational
sector.

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REFERENCES
1. Annamalai, E. 1997. “Questions on the Linguistic
Characteristics of the Tribal Languages of India”
(pp. 15-23), in A. Abbi (ed.). Languages of Tribal
and Indigenous Peoples of India, Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass Publishers.

2. ATDC. 1997. Tribal Language and Culture of Orissa.

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