 Elementary and middle-level schools across Tamil Nadu were closed for one and a half years due to the threat of the COVID-19 virus, and they reopened only on 1st November this year. As per the State School Education Department, the wide gap in offline education led to 1.28 lakh students dropping out of school. A large portion of these students belong to impoverished and underprivileged sections of society. To find out more about the cause of dropout, NewsClick visited some tribal settlements in the RNMLI hills of the western Ghats. I was told to consult a doctor. I was not even 3 years old when I was a child. I had to study somehow. Only if I had a child, my daughter could go to school and study. Without electricity, I could go to school. If it rains, there is no electricity. There is no electricity. How do we educate our children? There are students who go to college. There is an online class for them. We have to go from here to the road. How do we educate them? If it rains, we can't go there. We have to go to the forest. We have to build a house. If it rains, it will fall. We can't even have a house. What can we do with small children? There is electricity here. Look, they are not giving electricity to this house. Given the poor facilities in the tribal settlements, some parents had admitted their children to government residential schools before the pandemic. To their disappointment, they had to bring their children back home during the lockdown. And since then, the children received no formal education. When the pandemic broke out, the children went home from the hostel. After the lockdown, they gave me a book. They asked me to teach them at home. If I had to teach them at home, I would have studied. Only then, I could teach them at home. Since I didn't study, I have studied at the hostel. I have a lot of English. That's why they teach me at home. Even though I am younger than them, they don't teach me at home. They are very strict with me. When the pandemic broke out, I would go to the forest to play and play. They would tell me what their father is doing. They would tell me to teach them. That's how they were in the forest. I don't have any experience of reading a book. They would tell me to use my phone to study. They would tell me to use my TV. I don't have any electricity or TV. Even though I lived in a state house, they would give me electricity. I don't have any TV. I would go to the next house to study. They are in the state house. That's why they don't go anywhere. They are strict with us. They are in our house. I use my phone to talk to my parents. I use my TV. I watch the internet. I go to the next house to watch the watch. Many families own smartphones. But do not have an electricity connection to charge their phones. They are left with no other option but to request shopkeepers and government workers to charge their instruments in public spaces. However, the device cannot be used to attend online classes as they have to save up on battery. I don't have electricity. I only study in the light. I only have 3 litres of electricity. I didn't know how much I had. I had 5 litres of electricity. Now I have 4 litres of electricity. It takes only 10 days for a month. There is no more. It is difficult for children to study. We don't have any charge. We can only go to the next house. We don't have a card room. We don't have a saddle. They will talk to us for a day. They will only talk to us if we don't have electricity. If we have electricity, we can also use it. They also have to use it. From 1st to 5th grade, I studied in J.J Nagar. From 6th to 10th grade, I studied in the powerhouse. Then I studied at 11th and 8th grade. There is no more electricity in my village. There is no more electricity than 6 o'clock. After that, I have to go to 6 o'clock with a special class. I can't go from there. I can't study more. I can't go to school. I want to study. We need electricity. We need to study. We shouldn't go without studying. After that, we need to study better than our children. We need to help with electricity. To encourage the younger generation of tribal children to continue their studies and not drop out of schools, tribal students have started a tuition centre in one settlement. Although they have many hurdles to run the tuition centre, they understand the need for additional support and take the extra effort. In our tuition, we study for a total of 12 people. But now, only 6 people are coming. In our tuition, in Koran, everyone is locked down. They are not allowed to study. If you look at the tuition, they are not allowed to study. That's why we take the tuition. If it rains, we don't have any place to study. We don't have any tuition. We have to study for a very long time. That's why we don't have tuition. We don't have a separate place to study. We are studying in our own house. Now, as we are studying, we have shifted our family and have taken the tuition in our house. In our tuition, we don't have anything. We only have this light. That's why we have the blackboard. We have our own note and paper. That's what I am saying. There are only a few buses here. There are buses only for the Thai people. If they leave the buses, everyone stops going. No one stops going. Every time if it rains a lot, the buses don't stop. That's why no one stops. No one goes to school. They don't study with me. There are no kids and they don't go. I tell them to go to school. If they go to school, they will say, how can they go to school? How can they go to school? You know that, right? I tell them to go to school.