View from the Margins: For Adivasis of Kerala, the state is not always a shining example of equality

Voting is often the only chance that many of India's marginalised groups get to express themselves. As national elections approach, Scroll's reporters fanned out across the country to talk to groups with little socio-political power as part of a series called the View from the Margins. The aim: try to understand how the powerless and the voiceless have fared under a decade of Modi government.

Leela Santhosh remembers attending a government school in Kerala for a month. All of four, she would walk nearly 5 km through tea estates, patches of forest and difficult terrain to get to class. “There were no vehicles that time,” she said.

Her little feet somehow carried her the distance. But once she reached school, she felt completely out of place.

The teachers and many of the students spoke a language she had neither heard, nor could make sense of. She belongs to the Paniya tribe. The Paniya language her family speaks at home was “vastly different” from the language she heard at school – Malayalam.

She gave the government school a try for a month. Unable to follow even the basic instructions from teachers, she quit.

Santhosh is now 37. But things have not changed much. As the 2024 elections in Kerala approach, she noted that...

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