Earlier this morning, a casual Instagram conversation turned into something more telling. I had woken up at 2 am from a dream where I was reporting from Lawngtlai, a southern district in Mizoram, where “my life was in danger,” and to calm myself, and partly for humour, I decided to share it on my Instagram story.
A friend quickly responded, “If we were to file RTIs one after another in the LADC (Lawngtlai Autonomous District Council), and also file PILs, there would be lots and lots of trouble in the LADC,” he said, speaking from his experience of working in the district.
It made me recall another conversation I had just a month back with someone who has worked at a college in Lawngtlai for more than five years. She had talked about how the Autonomous District Council and the benefits that come with it are “destroying” the district, as large amounts of money flow in and are used for political gain.
This impact is evident in education.
Each year, when HSLC results are published, Lawngtlai is often the district with the lowest pass percentage. This year was no different. This comes at a time when Mizoram has been declared the first fully literate state under the Ministry of Education’s ULLAS initiative, with a literacy rate of 98.2% as per the Periodic Labour Force Survey 2023–2024.
In the 2024 HSLC results, 18 schools in the state recorded a 100% failure rate. Seven of these schools were from Lawngtlai, accounting for 70% of the failed students.
The pattern has continued over the years. In 2023, the overall pass percentage stood at 71.82%, with Aizawl district recording 82.96%, while Lawngtlai recorded the lowest at 49.63%. Among schools with a 100% failure rate, five out of fourteen were from Lawngtlai, accounting for 38 out of 95 failed students.
In 2022, HSLC pass rates were lower across districts, with Mamit recording 53.18% and Lawngtlai following at 59.99%, while Aizawl recorded 81.38%. Among schools with 100% failure rates, eight out of fifteen were from Lawngtlai, contributing 59 failed students out of 98.
In higher secondary results, similar trends appear. In 2023, Lawngtlai had the second-lowest pass percentage in the Arts stream at 63.59%. In the Science stream, the pass percentage was 84%, but only 46 students appeared for the exam, compared to 479 in Lunglei and 236 in Siaha. In the Commerce stream, the district recorded the third-highest pass percentage.
In 2022, Lawngtlai recorded the lowest pass percentage in the Arts stream at 72.13%, the second lowest in Science at 60%, and the third highest in Commerce at 65%.
Every time I try to dwell on the issues faced by the Lawngtlai Autonomous District Council, a response from an earlier interview with an academic comes to mind.
She had said, “The two Autonomous District Councils, Lawngtlai and Chakma, manage education up to the middle school level and use schools to gather votes by assuring jobs to favoured political party members. It is their main vote bank.”
Interviews in earlier reports also talked about deeper structural issues. Lawngtlai has the lowest literacy rate in the state, lower than the national average, and is a multilingual region where choosing a medium of instruction remains difficult.
Autonomous District Councils (ADCs) are local self-governing bodies established under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution of India to administer tribal areas with a degree of autonomy. They are designed to protect the culture, customs and identity of tribal communities while allowing them to manage local governance and development.
In Lawngtlai district, two such councils operate: the Lai Autonomous District Council (LADC) and the Chakma Autonomous District Council (CADC).
The question, then, is whether the use of schools as vote banks is affecting education in the two ADCs in Lawngtlai district. If teaching posts are secured through political loyalty rather than merit, what does that mean for the children in those classrooms?
The issue also extends to ethnicity and language. Doungel Chakma, a political science professor, noted in a paper titled Ethnicity in Mizoram: A Case Study of Ethnic Issues in the Sixth Schedule Area of the State that, apart from the Lai, Mara, and Chakma, minority tribes such as Bawms, Pangs, Tlanglaus and Riangs are present in the LADC and CADC areas.
These are communities that remain socio-economically backwards, with limited access to roads, connectivity and basic infrastructure, all of which directly affect their ability to access quality education.
The claim of 98.2% literacy begins to look detached when one district continues to show the same outcomes year after year.
Also Read: Arunachal: New mud-nesting ‘fanged frog’ discovered in Namdapha
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