Girls and Education and Cycles

These days there is a lot of concern around how RTE is going to be implemented, how we are going to make sure that there is a school in every neighborhood and how we are going to ensure that all the girls go to school.

Even in todays times, girls spend a lot of time fetching water or doing family chores. Bihar government has come up with a scheme which is fantastic not only in its impact but also in its simplicity.

The first time I read about it was recently in a book "Everybody loves a good drought" written by P Sainath. It talked about a district in Tamil Nadu where to empower women and instill them with self-confidence there was an NGO which taught them how to cycle. A place where women are used to walking to get anywhere, learning how to cycle symbolised freedom.  Travelling time reduced suddenly they had a lot of time in their hands to take on more things. It gave them the confidence to stand up against men who would spend most of their earnings on arrack.

While that was only a district. Bihar government has gone all the way. They created a scheme where a cycle was provided to every girl in class 9 and 10. The impact has been huge. Some excerpts from the article:

"The numbers reflect a dramatic impact: Since 2007-08, Bihar has spent R174.36 crore on cycles for 871,000 school girls. Girls enrolling in schools in the state have shot up from 160,000 in 2006-07 to 490,000 now. Dropouts among girls declined to 1 million from about 2.5 million in 2006."

"Of the 974,000 students who appeared for the state board’s class 10 exams, 400,000 were girls. Of these, 75,136 got a first class, more than double last year’s 37,708. Each of these girls is entitled to an incentive of R10,000"

If we have to educate every child we can either ensure that there is a school every 3 kms in the country or give every child a cycle to travel the distance in minutes! Innovation is the need of the hour.

Read the complete article here.