One of India&rsquos flagship programmes relating to education is the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) which mandates free, compulsory, and equitable primary education to all children. The study aimed at understanding whether a decentralized school management system makes it easier for the tribal community to participate in the School Management Committee (SMC) through open dialogue to ensure better school governance and access to quality education for children. SMC meetings facilitate open communication among parents to negotiate their rights and entitlements in a local setting. Participatory development communication that includes &ldquoinformation as means of awareness and open dialogue as a means of collective action&rdquo provides the theoretical underpinning. The research employed a qualitative case study design to obtain data from SSA staff, parents and community members in two schools of two tribal villages in Sundargarh district of Odisha. The research was split into four phases for thorough coverage of the three objectives. The results showed that while parents made up a sizable portion of the school committee, they were clueless about the responsibilities that came with their membership. Although co-learning sessions are mandated by SSA to encourage open discourse, neither the school nor the parents get involved. An information dissemination strategy called Information, Awareness, Motivation and Action (IAMA), involving few local educated youths, parents, teachers, and students, was implemented to address the issue. Interpersonal communication helped to build relationships between the teachers, literate youth volunteers, and community members. The sense of &lsquocommonness and homogenization&rsquo helped to change the perception of the community that they are not passive participants. The study concludes that educational reforms have usually been top-down processes and they fail at the ground level because of the overarching disconnect. One positive impact was that local success stories motivate the parents to care for their child&rsquos career. A mobilisation process led by local success stories can strengthen the social capital, and then it can create new success stories, not by force but by choice.

Keywords: School education, Participatory development communication, community participation, Odisha, Scheduled Tribe