Benevolent Kerala parliamentarian is beacon of light for poor tribal pupils

P.V. Abdul Wahab, the IUML leader, successfully implements Indian government’s development plan in Malappuram district.

It’s a dawn of a new era for a group of poor tribal pupils amid these unprecedented viral times at Nilambur taluka - a cluster of villages - in north Kerala’s Malappuram district.

They are back to learning and continuing their school education, which have been suspended since March 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic struck and resulted in the closure of schools.

Many of the pupils had virtually forgotten in-classroom teaching.

To make matters worse, they were cut off from the rest of the world because of the unavailability of Internet connectivity and lack of smartphones.

P.V. Abdul Wahab, a sitting member of the Rajya Sabha (RS) -- the Upper House of Indian Parliament -- and a non-resident Indian (NRI), who has been living in the UAE for the past four decades, told Khaleej Times that their education suffered since March 2020.

“Some of them could barely remember the names of their schools because the prolonged break had almost wiped out their memories of the campus,” he said.

Wahab, who belongs to the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), which is a potent political force in the district, has arranged for the distribution of Internet-enabled tablets for the tribal pupils under the Indian government’s Jan Shikshan Sansthan (JSS) initiative.

He has been a three-term RS MP and heads the JSS initiative in the district.

So far, around 150 tablets have been given to the tribal pupils, who are overjoyed at being able to reconnect the world at large and continue with their education.

Wahab has been involved with the tribal villages of Karulai gram panchayat as part of the Indian government’s Saansad Adarsh Grama Yojnna, a developmental scheme, and has adopted four villages in the district.

“They live in the middle of the forest in small houses and most of them are unemployed,” Wahab said.

“The only source of economic sustenance is the forest produce that the male tribals collect and sell. Healthcare facilities are abysmal and most of them lack basic amenities such as access to electricity or even telephones,” he added.

The tribal villages are neither well-connected with other parts of the district or the southernmost Indian state and a majority of the locals don’t want to venture out for jobs.