Education is like wearing glasses: Nomads' views of literacy and empowerment

Int. J. Educational Development, Vol. 18, No. 5, pp. 405–413, 1998 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reservedPergamon Printed in Great Britain

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EDUCATION IS LIKE WEARING GLASSES: NOMADS’ VIEWS OFLITERACY AND EMPOWERMENT

CAROLINE DYER AND ARCHANA CHOKSI

School of Education, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK

Abstract — Empowerment has become a major rationale for adult literacy work, but the relation-ship between literacy and becoming empowered is not as straightforward as is sometimes assumed.Among Indian nomads, whose traditional occupation is becoming ever less viable, attempts toevolve a peripatetic adult literacy programme met with only limited success. Nomads saw theprogramme as a vehicle for gaining the technical skills to deal with a defined range of tasks, butsince it could not offer the economic, cultural and symbolic capital they seek in their presentcircumstances, viewed formal schools as the route to empowerment. 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd.All rights reserved

The relationship between adult literacy andempowerment is generally held to be strong: somuch so that, as Youngman points out,“empowerment has become a major rationalefor adult literacy work” (Youngman, 1996, p.76). But if the relationship between the two hasbecome something of a commonplace, there isa danger of over-simplifying the equationbetween the nature of power and the context inwhich literacy events take place. The very factthat the highest proportions of non-literatepeople in the world are poor, live mostly in ruralareas or urban slums, are often female, andoccupy positions furthest away from the sourcesof power that allocate resources for develop-ment — health, housing, employment, edu-cation, and so on — demands continuing andclose investigation of the nature of the linkbetween social disadvantage and theempowering potential of literacy.

Increasingly sophisticated theorising aboutadult literacy has elaborated two models of liter-acy: the autonomous and the ideological (Street,1984). The former treats illiteracy as an inde-pendent variable, somewhat like a disease whichcan be cured by an injection of skills; the latterviews literacy in terms of social and culturalpractices and thus, in recognition of the rangeand variety of such practices, speaks of ‘literac-ies’ rather than of a single entity. The ideologi-cal view is supported by an ever-widening setof examples of the importance of context, andhow the circumstances in which learners find

405

themselves influence both their understandings,and their uses, of literacy (Street, 1996).

We attempt, in this paper, to extend this dis-cussion of the empowering potential of literacyby illustrating how closely it is conditioned byperceptions of the exercise of power in a parti-cular context. It is this aspect of contextualitywhich, we feel, needs more attention if we areto speak of literacy learning as an empoweringprocess. This concern arises from our work withRabari nomads of Kutch in Western India,where we found that context and conceptions ofpower were critical factors conditioning Rabar-is’ notions of the empowering potential of adultliteracy, and hence their response to the project.

LITERACY FOR NOMADS

Nomadic groups have long existed quite inde-pendently and self-sufficiently beyond the reachof state institutions. This position did not neces-sarily imply marginalisation; but rather, theexercise of a choice to remain apart. It couldbe sustained because nomads occupy a specificeconomic niche through their ability to exploitmarginal natural resources; and because theyhave internally robust socio-political and legalinstitutions that exist quite separately from, andrender superfluous, institutions of the state.Recent rapid modernisation in the wider world(Rao, 1994) have taken their toll on the naturalresources available to nomads. Subsequentenforced changes to their way of life have

406 CAROLINE DYER AND ARCHANA CHOKSI

prompted nomads to recognise that theirindigenous modes of learning are no longeradequate to equip their children with the rangeof skills they require to flourish in contempor-ary, modernising society (Swiftet al., 1989).Within the last two decades, being unable toread and write has become a source of frus-tration and difficulties. Even as they recognisethis, the nomadic way of life puts them beyondthe reach of state institutions, such as adult edu-cation classes or schools, which deliver literacylearning programmes.

The Rabaris of Kutch are a highly self-con-tained group of transhumant pastoralists. Tra-ditionally camel breeders, they have now turnedto the raising of sheep, goats and, less com-monly, cattle; only a handful of families stillbreed camels, which are used as pack animals.They migrate for some nine months of the year,usually in groups of 8–15 family units, returninghome to Kutch during the monsoon, which isalso the festive season when marriages takeplace. Rabaris from eastern Kutch migratewithin Gujarat, while those from central Kutchoften have animals permanently stationed inother states such as Andhra Pradesh, MadhyaPradesh and Maharashtra. Those from westernKutch no longer migrate and accompanyingincreasing sedentarisation has been gradualoccupational diversity; however since levels ofeducation remain very low, this is often inunskilled manual labouring jobs. Their socialcustoms are sustained both by the force of tra-dition and the engineering of an elected bodyof male elders known as thenat, or communitycouncil, which adjusts the rules and imposesfines on those who transgress. The ultimatesanction is outcasteing, which is a very severepenality as Rabaris prefer to avoid social contactwith other groups. There has been no censusenumerating exact numbers of Rabaris but it isestimated that in Kutch their numbers run tosome 90,000. Equally, although it has not beenmeasured, it is reasonable to suppose that theadult literacy rate in this ethnic group is negli-gible in eastern and central Kutch, and very lowin the west. Rabaris are Hindus. They speak dia-lects of Gujarati, with increasing amounts ofKutchi and Marwadi interspersed by Rabarisliving in the west of Kutch.

Our research project ‘Literacy for Nomads’ 1

(see Dyer and Choksi, 1997 for a project report)intended to provide an ethnography of literacy

acquisition which would explore strategies forprovision and provide a detailed review of per-ceptions of the relationship between literacy andempowerment in the Rabari context. We derivedour initial premises from talks with some pastor-alists, some leaders, and some governmentofficials. In early discussions, we identified aneed for some kind of peripatetic provision:there is no such educational provision in Guja-rat, yet the exigencies of the pastoralists’ occu-pation demand that supply moves with the lear-ners as they cannot move to the supply. Sincethere were no literate Rabari persons availableto act as literacy facilitators, we would initiallyadopt this role — and so also that of actionresearchers — ourselves. We intended to use lit-eracy learning materials that were based on thenomads’ lives and needs, which we wouldderive from living among them and in consul-tation with them. We hoped to minimise theobvious problems of cultural and linguistic ten-sions, and of gaining access to this closed group,by working as a two member female team, oneof whom is herself Gujarati (see Choksi andDyer, 1996 for an account of this North–Southcollaboration). Our intention was to validatetheir knowledge, but also to provide a contextfor the introduction of new knowledge whichwould complement their own, specifically inareas of animal husbandry where modern veter-inary science might have things to offer. We hada time period of just over two years, the firstof which we intended to use to conduct pilotmigrations, and generate the data and know-howthat would enable us to complete a longer,teaching-learning migration with a group thefollowing year.

From these first explorations, we learned thatthe Rabari occupation was hard but muchenjoyed by pastoralists, even though it wasbecoming increasingly difficult to find fodderand water. Some Rabari leaders and governmentofficers felt that in some respects Rabaris prac-tise animal husbandry in outmoded ways whichrender it less viable than it could be. We did notsee any need for Rabaris to leave an occupationwhich can have good economic returns, appearsrelatively safe from competition by othergroups, and which is for Rabaris a complete wayof life. We envisaged that the literacy workwould offer ‘value-added’ in two ways. Thebasic technical skilling would assist for instancein reading dosage instructions on modern veter-

407EDUCATION IS LIKE WEARING GLASSES

inary medicine, which is generally incorrectlydosed (Ramakrishnan, 1994), or fodder rationcards, or bus destination boards. We hoped touse these functional aspects to open up dis-cussions about fodder and herd management,the use of veterinary medicines, and wool andmeat production. Rabaris are very cautiousabout change in these areas but governmentofficials feel that unless small animal husbandrymoves towards becoming a commercially viablemodern business, it has little chance of survivalin an increasingly competitive agricultural mar-ketplace. In general too, the discussions inwhich the literacy learning would be embeddedwould engender a process of critical reflectionand confidence-building and help familiariseRabaris with the ways in which unfamiliar mod-ern institutions function. An expected outcomefrom the literacy work was that in the longerterm, Rabaris would have a better chance ofboth phrasing their demands from these insti-tutions more appropriately, and asserting them-selves against those who attempt to mis-usetheir positions of power.

The Demand for Non-Indigenous EducationAs we sought access to the transhumant

groups, we attempted first to establish the natureof demand for non-indigenous education. Mostaccessible were the two tiers of community lea-ders: the senior-most (nat patels) comprises ahandful of men who no longer husband animals,and have often moved into the transport busi-ness; one of them is a teacher. The second, andlarger, tier of community elders are men of anage when they no longer migrate, but remain athome while their families move with animals.These upper tiers of the Rabari social hierarchyare unanimously in favour of non-indigenouseducation, citing in often colourful metaphorstheir reasons:

Education is like wearing glasses. If the number is right,you can see, otherwise you are blind. If we wear glasses,at least we can see something. With glasses the worldin front of us looks green... If we as parents wear theseglasses, after 3–4 generations our kids will reach some-where. That’s what we need.

Once all these people learn to read and write, the wayI have, by reading bus boards, they will have an eye forit. The whole question of being cheated will just disap-pear. Once that happens, they can think about how todevelop their own business, and how to do things better.

If we have a cataract in our eye and go to hospital andget it removed, we’ll be able to see. This is like that,

people will start being able to see things. They will feelrelieved that the burden is gone from their heads. If thereis a ditch ahead, at least they won’t fall into it. It is allabout seeing things. If a woman is educated, she cantake care of her household better, she can teach her chil-dren how to talk, make them understand properly, andif she teaches the child, the child won’t be cheated any-where else.

However, despite this positive view of theneed for some form of modern education, it waswidely felt that existing provision and the Rab-ari way of life are not compatible:

There are lots of illiterate people, and many schemes forthem, but they fail because these people [non Rabaris]don’t want to study. With us [Rabaris] it is different. Wewant to study but there is no scheme, no system. If we dowant to fit into a system, we can’t, because of its timings.

The need for a peripatetic facility for transhu-mant Rabaris was fully endorsed, and indeedcame up in conversation before we raised it:“All this can only be done if a teacher migrateswith us. If anyone says, use a village adult liter-acy programme, that is not possible”. There wasalso no doubt or hesitation about Rabaris’capacity to learn, with “good memories andgood brains, and we have lots of patience. Ourpower is in our brains, that is missing in othercommunities”. Conversations with these lead-ers — who, in the ethnic group, are role modelsand opinion-formers — indicated that theywould be spreading among Rabaris a positiveperception of modern education, whose ‘good-ness’ was widely taken for granted, and whoseabsence was regretted and seen entirely as aproblem of logistics.

The view of modern education as a good andnecessary thing was indeed widespread amongtranshumant pastoralists, who cited variousreasons for learning to read and write. If theycould write letters, mothers would not need toworry about their daughters’ welfare:

I won’t worry if my girl goes to her in-laws’ place, atleast she will be able to write to me, but at the momentall we can do is sit and worry. But if she could writewe could communicate. If I get a letter from here I willknow what’s going on, otherwise all I can do is worryabout how she is, is she well, and if anything happensI am so far away.

These functional aspects of non-literacy werealways bound up with the resultant negativeimplications for self-image and status. On let-ters,

If we get a letter, we have to go to someone like youwho is literate, and ask what is written. Isn’t that a prob-


lem? If someone is good they will read; otherwise theywill say something is there which is not right, or theysay they don’t have time, and won’t read it.

Similarly, being able to read bus boardswould not only enhance mobility, but wouldreduce dependence on the help of others:

Without writing I do have problems, specially readingboards when I go out in the bus. Now I have to asksomeone, otherwise I could read the board and get onthe bus. Now I have to ask, sister, has my bus come?Sometimes people insult me, saying, can’t you see? Getlost. If you were literate you would not feel dependent.This is helplessness. I have to ask the time as I can’tread the clock. I would know what time the bus will go.I could read the board at the station and know this buswill start at this time. Just now, I run round and roundto find out about buses.

Put simply, ‘if there was education, we wouldbe clever, we wouldn’t have to ask anyone’. Anadditional factor was that being able to read andwrite would help them avoid being cheated,commonly expressed as ‘our brains woulddevelop. No-one will cheat us’. Cheating formen was certainly an ever-present possibility asthey do not do the day-to-day domestic trans-actions, and so, “We can understand the bignotes but if we have to add up the little ones,we can’t manage”.

The relationship between not being able toread, and so argue for one’s rights, and thepower of those who can do so is also forcefullymade by many Rabaris. They constantly experi-ence problems with lower-ranking Forestryofficers, police and other officials who putobstacles, both legitimate and illegitimate, in theway of their progress along migratory routes.Cattle breeders are entitled to rations of hay inlean years, and can get a pass stating thisentitlement to show at cattle camps which areset up along migratory routes in poor years.Because they cannot read this fodder licence,they cannot argue effectively with officers if theration is less than it should be. This fodderfacility is not extended to sheep and goat breed-ers, for whom the pressing problem is gainingaccess to traditional pasture lands that have beentaken over by the Forestry Department, and forwhich licences are now required. Such licencesare either agreed formally and fairly, but accord-ing to terms which Rabaris do not fully under-stand, or otherwise by ‘agreements’; in eithercase, the pastoralist is likely to be the lesspowerful negotiator. There is often little chanceof justice, and Rabaris link their powerlessness

in such situations with being non-literate: “Weget implicated in police cases and because weare illiterate we don’t know what to do next”.In their oral culture, Rabaris primarily experi-ence this non-literacy as non-possession of thelanguage of power, so their frustrations are fre-quently alluded to in variations of the comment‘we don’t know how to speak’.

Although there was almost unanimousenthusiasm for the idea of teachers going withthe herding groups, there was always doubt asto whether the animals would allow their herd-ers to combine migration with studying. Forexample, a retired elder asked us, “Do you thinkthey’ll study? A sheep will run off, they willrun after it, how can they learn?” and, at theside of a field, a pastoralist watching over hisanimals said, “How is it possible to study here?We have to go to a new village every day. Hereone day, there the next. We have to movearound the villages, how can we study?” Therewere frequent warnings that “unless you separ-ate a Rabari from his herd, nothing can bedone”.

Peripatetic Teaching: Pastoralists’ ResponsesDuring the first project year, we carried out

two migrations, which we intended as pilot stud-ies. One was of only one week’s duration, andthe second was for six weeks. Arranging thesewas very difficult as gaining access to movinggroups (dhangs) was always a protracted pro-cedure which depended on the good will andgood offices of numerous gatekeepers whom wefirst had to find. We continued also to attendany fairs, festivals or other events, to sit aroundin meeting places, and to find as many ways aswe possibly could of engaging with Rabaris.

The pilot experiments allowed us to establishthat, at some time during the day or evening, itwas possible to teach any member of themigratory group who was interested. Flexiblesession times could easily be fitted in with theirregular work, and as long as the literacy sessionsdid not compete for time with animal husbandryduties, they were welcomed. Our original ideaof moving with a group as participant observerswas not possible: we became their ‘teachers’from within the first few hours of joining bothgroups. Their understanding was that if we werethere in connection with education, we must beteachers and it was only in this role that wecould legitimately be a functional part of the


group. It was equally clear that we could notfocus solely on adults, as had been our intention,and were expected to teach children as well. Thecircumstances of the first group were not con-ducive to us remaining with them, and their trustwas hard to achieve, but in our role as teachers,we were welcomed into both groups. Within thesecond group, consisting of 48 people, we weretreated as sisters and daughters with full free-dom to observe and interact freely.

During our teaching sessions for the pilotwork, we focused mostly on numbers (for pricesand bus tickets) and learning letters throughnames. Learners clearly enjoyed the sessionsand in the second group, very soon began toapply what they had learned to daily situations,such as the problem of overcharging on buses.They were remarkably enthusiastic — so muchso that it was at times quite exhausting — andsome of them learned so quickly that theirachievements encouraged the whole group tofeel it would really be possible to learn to readand write. Apart from the process of acquiringthe beginnings of the necessary technical skills,many of the adults in thedhang viewed ourfriendly presence as teachers and group mem-bers as an opportunity for asking a stream ofquestions about how things in the non-Rabariworld work — from engines to solar lights, mar-kets and pricing, through to places of worship,clothing and religious and other rituals. We, inturn, absorbed an equally vast range of infor-mation about their lives, varying from acupres-sure for sheep and other indigenous medicalpractices, how to predict rain, the meaning ofeach tattoo and a huge vocabulary of embroid-ery stitches, to the tracking down of a missinganimal in unknown terrain.

We worked with both groups on the mutualunderstanding that this was an experimentwhich would only be continued if both sidesagreed it was appropriate to do so. When weleft after the pilot phase, to begin preparingmaterials for a full, contextually informed liter-acy programme, it was on the understanding thatwe all considered it worth continuing with theexperiment. We agreed to work together againafter the monsoon, expecting to migrate withthem from about November, for at least fourmonths.

The monsoon that year was the wettest for acentury. This was excellent news for the Rab-aris, as it meant that they could stay at home

much longer as supplies of fodder and waterwould last much longer than usual. It was badnews for us; not only as the migratory seasonwould be curtailed by some three months or so,but also because in years of plenty, the groupsmove in very much smaller numbers — perhapsonly two or three families, instead of the eightto fifteen we had experienced the previous sea-son. The number of learners in the group weworked with would be very small, and eventhen, a nucleus of learners could not really beguaranteed. We were invited to various of theirsocial functions over the rainy season, but ourbest efforts to make arrangements for the nextseason met with no success. One family soldtheir animals so the son could go to school andcontinue what we had started. One young manwho had been extremely keen took up a manualjob which his father had found for him in thecity. These cases indicated how fragile the occu-pation has become for some, while for othersthere were domestic concerns: the wife of theleader of last year’s group decided that heshould stay at home this year to help take careof his four young children; his animals too wereput into the care of another pastoralist. Even so,there were many others who were planning tomigrate as usual.

But as we tried to negotiate whom to movewith in the following season, we found that afterthis brief gap, the prevalent view that if you hadgoats you would never be free to do anythingelse had re-asserted itself, even within the groupwith whom we thought we had jointly provedthat it was possible to migrate and study at thesame time. The new possibility of peripateticteaching had failed to convince, and so the rip-ple effect we had expected, when the news ofthis experiment radiated outwards from thisgroup to create wider demand, did not happen.Members of ‘our’ group were adamant that itwould be better if we stayed with them whenthey were settled on the outskirts of a villagewhose fodder resources they usually rented,which would not be until next April (by whichtime temperatures were soaring into the upper40s). As we tried to persuade them, the responsewas ‘come back next season’; this was not poss-ible for us, for time was not on our side and theresearch grant was finite. We enlisted the helpof various others who supported our idea, andwho, with perceptions of time that were closerto our own, were better able to understand that


we were only free for one more year to try andcomplete this work.

We met many more pastoralists, and heardagain the same enthusiasm for the idea of peri-patetic teaching, but similar reasons for notinviting us actually to join their group. It slowlydawned on us that although the problems werephrased in terms of logistics, and there was stillgreat support for the idea of non-indigenouseducation, there was a gap between what wewere offering and what they really wanted.

Schooling, Adult Literacy and EmpowermentAt one level, our vision of literacy within the

pastoral way of life was shared by Rabaris, sincethe positive benefits of being able to read werefrequently demonstrated. However, timerevealed that this vision did not take sufficientnote of the contemporary context within whichpastoralism is practised. The destabilisation ofpastoralism as an occupation and way of life hashad enormous implications for Rabaris’ percep-tions of adult literacy as a means ofempowerment and development.

Rabaris believe that their occupation is a giftgiven by God and hold the life of each animalas dear as that of a child. They used hardly tohave any dealings with the market economy,since exchange and barter — dung and urine ofanimals for fertiliser against a place to stay, andgrains as payment — were sufficient when sup-plemented by the sale of clarified butter or woolfor immediate cash requirements. Pressures onland through industrialisation and agriculturaldevelopments have rendered pastoralists andtheir animals superfluous in the modernisingagricultural industry. This has made migrationcostly, as they now have to pay to use land theirgrandparents were paid to use, and/or raise cashto pay officials who bar their way. The need togenerate ever larger sums of cash has necessi-tated the sale of sheep and goats, which providemeat that is acceptable to Hindu sentiment andis also consumed by Muslims: but to the piousRabaris, this is like selling the blood of theirown children, and is morally reprehensible:“They eat from the money they earn by commit-ting sins... meat money. How long can they keepit up for?” There is little evidence of any othermeans of modernising small animal husbandrywhich Rabaris might pursue instead since, by itsown admission, the state has been extremelyslow to wake up to the economic potential of

sheep and goat rearing (GoI, 1987). As a result,although outreach services to stimulate otheraspects of production such as improved sheepbreeds with better wool exist, they are veryunderdeveloped and too patchy to excite muchattention from an already conservative clienteleof pastoralists.

Apart from their sense of moral decline at thesale of animals for human consumption, Rabarisalso strongly sense a decline in their socialstatus. They contrast their own positionunfavourably with that of Harijans and othergroups who are lower than themselves in thecaste hierarchy. The Indian state’s positive dis-crimination for these groups, which includesfree primary schooling, has provided some oftheir members with opportunities to progress ina secular state: such people may now occupypositions of authority at a level where theyimpact heavily on pastoralists’ lives — aslower-ranking Forestry Department officials,policemen, and so on. In a society that nowembraces other indicators of social ordering,Rabaris’ ascribed status as high caste Hindus isno longer of paramount importance. Further-more, as they move along migratory routes, theyare constantly taunted, since their way of life iswidely seen as ‘backward’ and adopting theterm of others, even Rabaris refer to themselvesas ‘jungli’ (of the jungle2, i.e. uncivilised).Some younger Rabaris share this view of thelink between the jungle and being backward:

I don’t like the jungle because I can never hear anythingnew there, or meet any new people. I don’t get any news,I won’t be able to learn what is happening in the worldif I stay there.

The dominant evaluation of their current andfuture situation among Rabaris was that, what-ever others may say, there is nothing intrinsi-cally wrong with pastoralism, but it is rapidlybecoming too difficult and troublesome to pur-sue. As a result, they seek different workoptions for their children. Through their interac-tions with rural people, they absorb the hegem-onic notion that schooling will lead to a job,which is prevalent in rural India [and borne outby successes just often enough to legitimise theurbanised and often irrelevant model of school-ing (Kumar, 1991)]. In Gujarat too, even in themost remote rural areas, enrolling children inschool is beginning to become an establishedsocial norm and is widely seen as an indicatorof contemporary ‘progress’ [enrolment rates


showed an average of 76% (84% boys and 69%girls) in the State in 1986 when the last surveywas conducted, and even in Kutch which isofficially designated an ‘educationally back-ward’ District the average rate was 71%(5AIES, 1990)]. With the imminent collapse oftheir traditional occupation, Rabaris do not wishto deny their children the one widely acknowl-edged route to a different future. As the fatherof three young children (who has sincesedentarised) said:

Look at this, this is not life, not for me at least. I thinkthis is a wasted life, you only get one life, this humanlife won’t come again. I am just wasting the only lifewe are given, I’m not happy. This life will just trickleaway. If we do things differently, our children will behappy, we will be happy.

Furthermore, while the premise of our projecthad been literacy within pastoralism, our viewof a modernised ‘industry’ also proved inappro-priate. Rabaris view pastoralism not as a busi-ness, but as a total way of life, in which thepersonalisation of animals and their religiousnotion of being guardians of the flock during theanimals’ mortal existence is valued at least asmuch as making a profit. They therefore see nofuture in adapting their occupation from a moralto a market economy, on what would for thembe an unethical basis, and find it more appropri-ate to leave animal husbandry altogether. Atpresent, the moral dilemma remains unsolved,as a Rabari leader explained:

It is very difficult for the community, they believe thatif they start selling their own sheep, their name is thatof a butcher. (A man) won’t do it with his own hand. Ifhe grazes it, it means he serves the sheep. For him, heis doing this service. If you don’t sell it yourself, butyou give it to others to sell, they say, we just give themto business people, meaning that they aren’t actually but-chers themselves. This is how they keep their peace ofmind, otherwise they would feel they had killed a life.They get their peace of mind by feeling they haven’tnecessarily given it to be killed. They don’t understandand calculate profit.

As far as most Rabaris were concerned, ourintention of using literacy as value-added withinpastoralism was basically a flawed premisewhich, far from being empowering, seemed tocondemn them to a backward life. They haveinternalised the message, both from what otherssay and their own experience, that through theirlack of education “we have become backwardand so we have remained backward” whileothers have gone ahead:

In the past, we had everything. But now the animal hus-bandry we do today does not give us enough to surviveon. God gives us and we are carrying on with it, buttruly there is no hope from these animals now. We arestill doing animal husbandry because we are illiterateand so we can’t find anything else. If we found some-thing else we could change, we are very hard-working,but now pastoralists can’t survive. With God’s grace,and if education increases, we will be able to find a way,and that will be very good.

Rabaris feel that if a child could be educated(usually a son) this would be sufficient for himto begin a business which would ensure thewhole family had some income which otherscould supplement. As there is no other localmodel of education to compete for provision ofaccess to employment (Street, 1996, notes thelack of evidence as to whether literacy pro-grammes can do so), formal schools appear tooffer the only option. A recently sedentarisedmother told us:

We returned just for the education of our children. Wethought, we are illiterate and if we stay with herding,our children will remain illiterate too. So we came backjust for our children.

To fulfil these expectations, Rabaris have tomake use of government schools whose poorquality is presently the focus of major reforms(cf. DPEP, 1993; Dyer, 1994, 1996; NPE, 1992;World Bank, 1996). Like many village people,Rabaris recognise that their children will prob-ably not be well served by schools in theirpresent form, and that acquiring basic literacyskills in these schools may take four years. Thisreluctant acceptance hinges also on their widerview of what, almost regardless of their quality,schools can offer: for Rabaris believe that tosucceed in different occupations, they mustovercome the hurdle of their ‘jungli’-ness. Sed-entary Rabari leaders commented, about thosewho still engage in migratory animal husbandry:

They have grazed animals for 40 years, they don’t knowthe characteristics of (other caste groups). They don’tknow how to behave with them, they don’t come intocontact with them because they don’t have the oppor-tunity. So when they come back, and when they try tochange their business, they don’t fit in with anyone else.

If we categorise the businesses: big merchants, smallbusinessmen, farmers, and labourers... the last one onthe ladder is herding. No contact with people. If theydon’t come into contact with others, how are they goingto develop? How are they going to get any knowledge?We live in a democracy and all the other castes exceptRabaris live as they please. Their life is a slave’s life.

While we attributed value to retaining a sep-


arate identity in the face of the globally hom-ogenising processes of modernisation, it wasapparent that in the context of the changesbrought about by these very processes, Rabarisperceive this identity as an obstacle to job pros-pects. They see schools as a means of socialis-ing their children to interact with other ethnicgroups and so from their point of view, the hom-ogenising function of schools which we hadsought to avoid was a positive incentive to enroltheir children. They seek to use schools to pro-vide a knowledge base which their children willhave in common with children from othergroups, and they accept that they cannot do thisthemselves. Our efforts to centre the literacylearning on their knowledge and experiencecontrasted with the Rabaris’ view that even theirmode of learning — by apprenticeship, obser-vation, and individual and collective experi-ence — is inferior to the textbook mode ofschools, as a sedentary Rabari leader com-mented:

At the moment, a learner looks and recognises but oncehe comes into contact with the other world, he developsthrough experience. That takes a long time. But withproper training in reading and writing, there is no needto take all this time, the memory is good so they canjust start straight away. A person hears something, andcan’t make out its meaning, what that meaning is comeswith experience. But if he learns the meaning of thingssystematically, from childhood, it will be much faster,he won’t have to wait for experiences. So if learningbecomes systematically organised, he can develop fast,they can learn in a quarter of the time it takes other kidsto learn.

They liked the idea of adult literacy, sincereading bus destination boards, bus tickets, andration cards, and writing letters would be useful.But what really concerned them was that theirchildren should ‘improve’ (sudhare) andbecome ‘clever’ (hoshiar). They all believedthat herding animals and literacy are not com-patible and would be happier if we went andstayed in a village and ran a school for theirchildren. Their view of empowerment anddevelopment for the Rabari group was linkedwith schooling for children, and literacy foradults in this context was of negligible impor-tance. The literacy programme we had offereddid not provide their children with certificationfor a job; nor did it seem to offer the type ofsocialisation they felt was now required, or thesocial status that now accrues from going toschool. The Rabaris sought various types of

capital that the type of literacy approach weadopted did not offer: economic (via certifi-cation for a job); cultural — form of language,social manners; and they also believed thatschools would furnish them with what has beentermed symbolic capital — the power to converteconomic and cultural capital into materialresources and social authority (Bourdieu andPasseron, 1977; Street, 1995). They wanted touse schools to provide such capital, since theirexperience told them that those who have thepower to exploit them have used their educationand their offices to reach and sustain this pos-ition. They apparently that they felt that in imit-ating what they understood to be this route topower and these forms of capital, they toowould be powerful. Rabaris did not see any ofthe types of capital they sought as deriving froman adult literacy programme, since they under-stood literacy classes as a means of providingtechnical skills to solve a finite and identifiedrange of literacy problems.

CONCLUSION

Our experiment with a peripatetic adult liter-acy programme among transhumant pastoralistsin the context of one of India’s most industrial-ised States in the mid-1990s has provided manyopportunities for exploring the complexities ofhow adult literacy relates to perceptions ofempowerment, development and ‘progress’.While we established that literacy teaching andlearning can be related to pastoralism, this wasnot perceived to be an empowering approachsince pastoralism itself is no longer viewed asan adequate mode of generating the economic,cultural and symbolic capital that appear to bea pre-requisite for finding occupational nichesin a modern economy. Such capital is attachedto formal schooling, and not to a non-formalprogramme of adult literacy. Where there issuch a hiatus in occupational continuity, the pri-orities of adults were not an adult literacy pro-gramme, but access to work in the modern sec-tor. This is regulated by schools which provideaccess to the types of capital and knowledgewhich have been legitimised as those which‘count’, even by those who until recently havehad no interest in possessing such capital. Evena literacy approach such as the one we used,which derived from Freirean notions of ‘consci-entisation’ (Freire, 1972, 1985), to encourage


critical reflection on the relationship between lit-eracy practices and the (mis)exercise of power,does not challenge the hegemony of this notion.The type of schools which are available for Rab-ari children to use may be highly unlikely toprovide all three forms of capital, given the roleof such schools in reproducing, rather than chal-lenging social inequalities (Carnoy and Levin,1976), but they offer that promise. In the cir-cumstances in which Rabaris currently findthemselves, that is a compelling enough reasonfor viewing formal schooling as a moreempowering option than adult literacy.

NOTES1. The research project ‘Literacy for Migrants: an eth-

nography of literacy acquisition among the nomads ofKutch’ was funded by the UK’s Economic and SocialResearch Council, whom we thank for their support.

2. While to us the term ‘jungle’ implies thick tree andother vegetation, Rabaris use this (same) word todenote tracts of arid land with very little vegetationother than the non-indigenous desert shrubprosopisjuliflora, known locally as ‘mad acacia’.

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Education is like wearing glasses: Nomads' views of literacy and empowerment