KADWA SACH #LOHARDAGA

Lohardaga                       (Thana Toli/Road)           23/Sept/2010     04:25PM

Education Scenario

Though Lohardaga has not been a land of great schools and colleges,yet it has never been far behind in producing exceptionally well doctors,engineers,civil servants,techies,mathematicians and businessmen.Some of the renowned schools of Lohardaga include DAV Public School,Saraswati Shishu Mandir,Nadia Hindu Ucch Vindyalay,Triveni Public School, Usuline Convent and Chunni Lal High School et al.DAV Public School and Saraswati Shishu Mandir are considered to be the two best schools in Lohardaga.While DAV is known for its competence in English,Saraswati Shishu Mandir boasts of its quality of Mathematics and Science teachers,though being a Hindi medium school.But both schools have a history of giving great results and producing quality students.Triveni Public School is also a budding school but yet to prove its mattle. Lohardaga is also the home for two colleges namely, B.S. College and Women's college.But effectively only one college is operational because of the ongoing land disputes in Women's College.B.S College offers higher educations in Science, Arts and Commerce stream but fails to perform up to the marks in all the three faculties.That's why most of the students of Lohardaga who are keen to pursue higher studies move to Ranchi,the state capital,which houses a number of good schools and colleges offering higher education.

Economy

The inhabitants of this district mainly depend on agriculture, forest produce and seasonal migration to different parts of the country. 80% of the population depends upon agriculture. The main crop of this area is paddy. In the small irrigated area wheat is grown to meet the annual food sufficiency. Also this district is linked with larger vegetable markets like Jamshedpur, Rourkela and Calcutta. There is a cold storage in the district. But profitable vegetable cultivation is being limited to road side non-tribals. Generally, villagers of the district keep plough animals. Also they keep goats and poultry birds as buffer. Although there is a dairy chilling plant in the district head quarter, dairy is practised by very few people mainly non-tribal.


The net sown area is only 55% of the total area of the district. Two blocks i.e. Kisko & Senha have large area under dense forest cover. The forest cover is around 32-35% of the total area of the district. The average land holding per household is 1.65 Ha. The per capita agriculture land is around 0.28 Ha. Net irrigated area is 13.4% of net sown area (0.8% by canals, 7% by wells, 2% by tanks & 3.6% by lift irrigation & others).


Most of the villages except the hilly pockets of the district are connected with the roads. Still some of the hamlets have no linking roads. Electricity is supplied from Patratu Thermal Power Station which is in the Hazaribagh district. Out of 354 villages only 25 have rural electrification. Water supply system is not available in rural area. The villagers get their drinking water from tube wells and dug wells.

Problems:

Lohardaga, being a very small and unnoticed district, faces a plethora of problems that are an impediment to the progress of this district.The biggest problem that Lohardaga faces is the lack of quality education. With a few private schools imparting satisfactory education, most of the government schools lack even a decent infrastructure, leave apart the quality of teachers. The government schools face many other problems like unavailability of good faculty and irregularities on the part of teachers, lack of good facilities (e.g. good labs and libraries), and lack of competitiveness among schools. The second prominent problem that Lohardaga faces is that of an extremely poor electrical supply. The main reason behind this is the lack of government attention towards Lohardaga's development. Lack of proper electricity supplies also weakens Lohardaga's economic scenario. The third major problem is lack of pure and quality drinking water. This is the main cause of lots of water borne diseases. The fourth major challenge that Lohardaga faces is of lack of opportunities. This has created a massive unemployment in and around the district headquarters and has given rise to problems such as Naxalism and Excessive Politicism. Unemployed youth finding no ways to earn their bread and butter jump into antisocial practices like naxalism or they jump into politics without any specific purpose just to make money. This has led to the factionalisation of Lohardaga. These youths when become politicians and come in power still lack in ethics and values and lead to big scams in all the public works.

Shrikant Tiwari