Duration: December 2021 – April 2022
Status: Completed
Funder/ Partner: The Purva Bharati Educational Trust
The Tea gardens form significant portion of the Assam geography and employs nearly 10 lakh garden workers across 856 tea estates in the state who are critical labour force for the tea production. Welfare of these tea garden workers is one of the important aspects of the development programs in the state.
While many studies have looked into the conditions of the tea workers including their working conditions, remunerations, deductions in pay for workers and the adequacy of housing and sanitation facilities, the studies looking into the State Government Budget for Education in tea garden areas as compared to the other areas are few and far between. With the emerging scenario of implementing the new labour codes, it becomes very essential for developing a new policy on school education in Tea estates which could probably become the key to development of programs.
This study will focus on the public expenditure on school education in the state with a special focus on the expenditure for tea estates region. This will also enable a comparison of the expenditure in the tea estates region versus the rest. The indicators of school education if available for these region (in whichever way closest to) wise comparison of expenditure will also be attempted to understand the impact of public spending on school education. The expenditure exclusively relating to compliance of Right to Education (RTE) would also be analysed and compared across the regions. The study will also explore the impact on quality of public expenditure by undertaking a small field survey in both tea estates and other regions.