Bangalore: For the Koraga tribe, Sabitha brings pride

Relentless pursuit of an academic career has taken a girl from the most backward community of Koragas to the prestigious post of Assistant Professor in Mangalore University.

Sabitha of Gundmi village, near Brahmavar in Udupi district has created history for her community and enhanced the pride of the entire spectrum of the tribal communities by clearing the National Eligibility Test in 2010 and the State-level Eligibility Test conducted by Mysore University in the first attempt in 2011.

Like most tribal women, Sabitha had a terrible personal life, losing her parents when young, and had to complete her education with the payout on the insurance policy of her mother and by doing few odd jobs.

“I had to drop out of the school after my tenth standard for two years and worked with an NGO that works for the welfare of my tribe. But throughout that period I longed to come back to academics and begin my career, she told dna.

It was not just her challenges on a personal front, but Sabitha also had to fight the stigma of belonging to a tribe that has traditionally been forced into the most menial of tasks. For centuries, they were forced to clean toilets and carry human excreta in baskets on their heads, before underground drains were constructed across the coastal areas. Even today, coastal towns and cities have ‘conservancy lanes’ facing the back of houses, where Koraga men and women clean toilets.

The terrible legacy of their demeaning profession was that many of them As a result of their long association with this profession many of them courted incurable diseases which was passed on to generations. The Prof Mohammad Peer report on Koragas had opened a national level debate on the issue which made the Karnataka government sit up and take notes and launch a special welfare programme for Koragas.

Coming with the disadvantage of belonging to the community and yet fighting it out, Sabitha has earned the admiration of her peers and mentors.