The background

The butterfly effect is evident everywhere and gone are the days when a village in India could survive without feeling the heat of what was happening around the world. A remote village is vulnerable to decisions taken a thousand miles away. It was felt that formation of a group of concerned grassroots people was necessary who would facilitate a process of empowering village communities to take the right decisions and raise protests against policies that are wrong. They would also examine the linkages between the livelihood of parents and the education of the children at the very grass roots level. And hence was formed Education Resource Groups (ERGs).

How it began

In India, inspite of different education commissions and National Policy on Education (NPE, 1968), no concrete step was taken to make equal quality education accessible to all. The country finally settled for NPE formulated in1986, which introduced a dual track approach. Education is a child’s birthright and every child should get an equal opportunity to go to school and get quality education irrespective of class, creed, gender, religion, and economic status. Still, the educational system remained as divisive, discriminatory and elitist as ever.

The role of the Education Resource Group was envisaged in this context and had its trial run in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Vikramshila believes in education for equality and in emancipation of people from an exploitative society. The partners of CRY in Uttar Pradesh reposed their trust in Vikramshila. They found that the pedagogical values practised and proclaimed by Vikramshila like liberation of the human mind, unfolding of human potential, and establishing the rights of the child were in sync with what they themselves believed in. Thus a group of five people was formed through a process of trial and error, which not only capacitated the teachers working at the grass root level in remote villages but also helped them translate alternative ideological elements in their operational areas. The first ERG was thus formed in UP. Later on it was expanded to Rajasthan with six members and Madhya Pradesh having five members. At present these groups are working with approximately 34 organisations in their respective states.

Setting out with a mission…

In The objective of ERG is to influence the education policies of the respective state governments and at the same time remain in touch with the grass roots to make them aware of their rights and build a bridge with all the organizations working for this movement. The mission of ERG is to make education a people’s issue and build up a strong movement for equal quality education for all, which is growing from strength to strength. ERG is a group of people who primarily consider education as an issue impacting each and every one, and their task is to:

Make the common people aware of the need of quality education
Fight for establishing a non-discriminatory equal society using education as the prime tool
Build a movement to achieve this goal involving community, a group of enthusiastic teachers, as well as opinion makers to bring about change in the entire pedagogical process
Provide training and academic inputs to teachers and help partner organisations to build up model centres

All these activities have a common focus – to address the issue of quality education. In the three states, the ERG teams work in close co-ordination with the respective state alliance. The state alliance in turn works in close collaboration with NAFRE (National Alliance for Fundamental Right to Education and Equity).