A SURVEY OF THE BPL FAMILIES OF A VILLAGE IN HIMACHAL PRADESH Dr.

Ajay Kumar Attri Assistant Professor (Education) MLSM College Sundernagar ABSTRACT Himachal Pradesh is one of the smaller hilly state of India, mainly comprising villages of adverse types. This survey is about village Lagyar of gram panchayat Tihra, Block Dharampur of District Mandi in Himachal Pradesh. Ten illiterate adults of 18 + age group were identified in the village. All are from BPL families. Four are from Cobbler families and remaining are farmers. Their mother tongue is mandiyali and religion is Hindu. Maximum are old age adult. Their mother tongue is mandiyali and they are of Hindu religion. INTRODUCTION The ancient Sanskrit poet Kaldisa called the Himalayas "the measuring rod of the world" -- in size and scale and splendor there is little on earth that compares in magnitude to the high altitude ranges that shelter these far northern reaches of India. Proclaimed by ancient Indian texts as Devbhumi -- "Land of the Gods" -- and believed to be the earthly home of the mighty Lord Shiva, the beautiful, far-flung Himachal Pradesh has an almost palpable presence of divinity. Bordered by Tibet to the east, Jammu and Kashmir to the north, and the Punjab to the west, the landlocked state is one of great topographic diversity, from vast bleak tracts of rust-colored high-altitude Trans-Himalayan desert to dense green deodar forests, apple orchards, cultivated terraces, and, everywhere you look, sublime snowcapped mountains. Himachal Pradesh is one of the smaller hilly states of India, mainly comprising villages of adverse types. It is in different stages of development. Total rural areas consist of 20118 villages out of which 17495 are inhabited and rests are inhabited. The main occupation of the villagers has been agriculture, but majority of areas reflect low yield of crops, low productivity, difficult transportation system. Beside unequal distribution of land is a big impediment in the way of homogeneous development. The average life style of a poor villager is dominated by socially obligatory needs to maintain the rural social ways. Rural community live in proximity to each other, having strong belonging and loyalty to their place, caste creed and gotra etc. every village has their own local Gods and goddess or remote ancestors who are their guides in almost every activity. Rural development policy along with deep understanding of the traditional production system and taking serious concern about ecological factors are definitely going to improve the

standard of living and enhancing their quality of life of the rural areas of Himachal Pradesh. This survey is about village Lagyar of gram panchayat Tihra, Block Dharampur of District Mandi in Himachal Pradesh. Ten illiterate adults of 18 + age group were identified in the village. All are from BPL families. Four are from Cobbler families and remaining are farmers. Their mother tongue is mandiyali and religion is Hindu. Maximum are old age adult. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSUIONS Regarding out-of-school children having age 6-14, there were only two children from SC families. Reason for their dropout was ignorance among parents. Among adults with qualification more than 10th and above are from general category and from Hindu religion. Their medium of instruction was English mostly. Mostly are graduates and are employed but those who are 10th or 10+2 are unemployed. Those who are retirees or employed have no educational needs but those who are 10+2 want to become graduate and post-graduate. Persons who are below poverty line are those whose qualification are lower and are skilled laborers. Maximum are male and working in MNAREGA or road-laborers. Persons who are active and making progressive change all belong to educated families and they are not large in numbers. Maximum are males and are form general categories. They all are on job and earning from 1.5 lakh to 9.6 lakh per annual. Identified persons requiring educational and vocational guidance and counseling are either students or unemployed youth. Their age ranges from 18 to 33 years. Those Students who are in school educational needed educational guidance and those who are unemployed need vocational guidance. Educational needs of the community are quality education, English medium school, school, scholarship, guidance, information centre and vocational centre. Regarding Health and nutrition community need clean water, balanced diet, specialist doctors in PHC and awareness programme. For family welfare community need Children Park, library and employment. Regarding agriculture and animal husbandry, they need dairy farm, poultry farm, vet nary hospital and seed centre. They need employment and vocational institutes. In any other priorities they need proper road and protection of agriculture from wild animals. For out-of-school children there is no provision for non-formal education. And there exist no adult education centre except gram panchayat in the community. There is no library and university/ college in the nearby location. IGNOU Centre is far away from the village.

 Different Institutions existing in the neighborhood community are one govt. and one private senior secondary school and one primary school. No community hall is available. Only panchayat room is available and no public library is available. Two banks are available and one post office and one private computer centre is available in the community. There exist no non-formal education agencies, no open and distance education institutes and no other resource centre is available in the community. The only MNAREGA programme is running in the gram panchayat. Truly speaking this village needs lot of developmental programmes and facilities to lift its community. REFERENCES www.himachal.nic.in "India has the largest number of illiterates in the world", Rediff, 2007-1121, http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/nov/20illi.htm, retrieved 2009-11-27 Cencus Of India | url= http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011-provresults/ indiaatglance.html "National Literacy Mission website". Nlm.nic.in. http://nlm.nic.in. "Census Of India". http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011-provresults/indiaatglance.html. Retrieved 2011-03-31.