Educational Status Among Students Studying in High Schools Whose Parents are Inflicted by Handigodu Syndrome in, Karnataka

The Indian constitution has given utmost importance to education as the fundamental right to all the citizens. The national policy of education formed under the Indian constitution emphasizes mainly on upbringing the educational status of socially deprived classes. The facilities extended under the schemes include provision of scholarships, merit scholarships and academic scholarships. The government is taking all possible measures to ensure education to all. Several new concepts on education are being implemented to motivate children to enroll themselves to schools. Mid day meals, providing basic facilities for children to attend schools, distribution of free books to underprivileged are some of them to mention. The main objective of national policy of education, 1986 is “universalization of education”.

In spite of all these efforts, some classes of the society, be it poorer section, deprived classes, children with physical deformalities or such family histories are not being able to enroll to the schools. One such group is children or children of families inflicted by Handigodu Syndrome.

An effort is being made here to study and analyze the educational status and among the students studying in high schools whose parents are inflicted by Handigodu Syndrome in Karnataka.

The disease was named after the village “Handigodu” where the first ever case was reported. According to a study conducted by the ‘Department of Public Health Analysis Bangalore’ in the year 1975, the water and food samples used by the affected people was subjected to laboratory analysis the major symptom of the disease include sever back pain and difficulty in walking scientifically the disease was named as ‘Endemic Family Arthritis of Malnad’

The disease has been reported at a time among various villages after 1975 is Shimoga and Chikamagalore districts in Karnataka.

The disease gradually develops in an individual without any notice. Generally it starts with back pain and tightness in the knee joints. Weakness appears equally among the left and right side of the body. The disease takes its severity after the joints lose their efficiency thereby making the diseased person unable to do his daily routine. The person loses his normal height due to bent legs. Knock knees and bent legs worsens the body structure itself

The person feels difficulty in carrying out daily routine. He cannot even sit on the floor due to tightness of the knee joint. It becomes difficult for him to stretch the legs. The disease though not lethal reduces the efficiency of the person affected.

The inflicted persons are socially deprived. The inbreeding practices follwed together with physical disability further renders them socially and economically backward. As they have to earn their livelihood by means of labour, the physical disability hinders their capacity to work thereby depriving them of their bread and butter. The social distance of the inflicted students and the normal students is more. The parents of the inflicted children are far away from the main streams of the society. The learning competency among the inflicted children is very less compared to the normal students. Because of the social and economic backwardness, the parents of the inflicted children and the children themselves are lagging behind in education.

There might be many social problems concerning the education or other aspects of deprived classes in the society. Most of them are not coming to light. This study is concentrating only upon the educational status and related factors. There is an urgent need to analyse the other social aspects. Particularly the societal upbringing of that students. The Handigodu syndrome has put all the inflicted families under darkness. Studies can also be carried out on most other problems that are emanating out of the syndrome like the psychological status of the inflicted families, their social, economical status, and other normal people's perception towards the inflicted families to develop relationships with them and so on