ARJUN NAIK GUGULOTH

arjunguguloth03@gmail.com

Mother tongue as medium of instruction in

Lambada: A case study of Telangana State

INTRODUCTION:
Lambada had led a gypsy life in the past and primarily lived in the western Indian state of Maharashtra,
Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. They belong to Scheduled Caste in Karnataka state and backward
caste in other states respectively. Basically, they are nomadic people from the Indian states of
Rajasthan, North West, Gujarat, Western Madhya Pradesh and Eastern Sindh province of Pakistan.
And are spread all over the country from north to south. According to 2011 census, the population of
Lambadas in Andhra Pradesh (combined Telangana) is 20, 24,473. Most of the Lambadas area
(thandas) has less accessibility to upper primary education. Most of the Lambadas in Telangana state
has just primary level schools. But if we check it in depth, we can find that the schools in this areas
belongs to private organizations.

The schools in thandas has either Telugu or English as the medium of instruction. Not a single school
has Lambada language as the medium of instruction. The teachers who are working in the schools
there, has no knowledge over Lambada language. As a result, they will not use Lambada language with
new students in the schools. So the new students get afraid of listening to the new language that was
never heard of and refuses to go to the school. This is the main cause for an increase in the dropout
rates among the students of Lambada community, which eventually leads to the decrease in literacy
rate of Lambada community when compared to the other communities.

OBJECTIVES:

I want to do a comprehensive research on the education of Lambada community regarding the

dropout rates, the changes that we need to make in the teaching methods in Lambada areas, and the
benefits of mother tongue education in Lambada and document the school system.

METHODOLOGY:

The methodology includes the Collection of samples from some of the schools of tribal areas and also
from the respective government departments. I would like to do a participant observation and work
for the development of educational facilities in the Lambada community. I also focus on some of the
technical methods that can be used to create curiosity in students which finally creates interest in
education.

OBSERVATION:

In 2006, the department of education in Andhra Pradesh has brought the concept of “multilingual
education” to improve the literacy rate among the tribal of the state but it was not implemented
properly. During that period the state government has prepared few books in the Lambada language
with Telugu script for the primary school children but it was of no use. Today the books remained only
for museums and forest offices.

The research based on mother tongue education says that mother tongue education increases the
cognitive development of the students. Also we know that the literacy rate of Lambadas very low and
the major reason for it would be the usage of either Telugu or English as a medium of instruction which
results in the poor performance of the students. It may result in the active class participation of the
children in the class.

REFERENCES:

Nyika A, (2014).Mother tongue as the medium of instruction at developing countries

universities in a global context. pp. 1-5

Lal, B. Suresh, (2016). A historical study of origin and migration of Banjara tribe in Telangana
state. International journal of current research, pp. 40261-40267

UNESCO, (1953). The Use of Vernacular Languages in Education; pp. 47-48. Paris: UNESCO
Publishing