About the Book : Education in the sense of literacy and formal schooling programmes is a powerful social instrument with a tremendous potential for good and evil. The Constitution of India contains broad guidelines for the educational development of tribal groups, yet it remains to be seen whether and how three decades of programmes and motivational schemes and the demarcation of Tribal sub-plan areas that reflect the uneven demographical distribution of these people have been beneficial to them. The present work, covering 64 villages in the 32 talukas of the Gujarat tribal sub plan area, uses censuses, records of the Department of Education and Social Welfare and research surveys to remedy the analytic and geographical limitations of earlier studies. It considers community-provided educational opportunities as well as individual socio-economic and social-psychological variables affecting their utilization. While comparing tribal groups with other geographically proximate communities and amongst each other, it examines the relations between ethnicity, occupation and education and asks whether the normative climate generated by non-tribals is conducive to tribal development. Intra-tribal social hierarchy is correlated with educational attainment and the relation between awareness and educational development analysed. Various indicators of educational development are also examined. A valuable addition to the critical literature on education and development with important policy implications.

About the Author : Vimal P. Shah obtained his M.A. (Sociology) degree from the Gujarat University and Ph. D. (Sociology) degree from the University of Wisconsin. He has worked as a Research Associate with Professor Wm. H. Sewell at the University of Wisconsin, and as a programme Associate in the Ford Foundation, New Delhi. He is currently working as Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology of the Gujarat University. He has published several research papers monographs in the fields of educational aspirations achievements, family and research methods. Tara Patel obtained her M.A. (Gujarati & Sanskrit) degree from the University of Bombay, M.A. (Sociology) degree from Columbia University, and her Ph. D. from the University of London. She was Head of the Department of Sociology, Gujarat University, from its inception in 1954 till her retirement in 1978. She was a Fellow of the Agricultural Development Council Inc. at the University of Wisconsin for a year, a Visiting Professor of Rural Sociology at the University of the Philippines, Los Banos. She was also a member of the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes Commission appointed by the Government of Gujarat. She has published several research reports/papers in the fields of family, social problems, educational aspirations, and educational attainment of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.