So many Kamalas

Column for Mathrubhumi

 

(Translated in Malayalam)

 

 

Many Indians celebrated the nomination of Kamala Harris as the vice-presidential candidate for the Democratic Party for the November presidential election in the US. They did so because her mother was an Indian from Chennai, who went to the US for higher studies, stayed on, and married a Jamaican academic.  Kamala is the older of her two daughters.

 

But for every Kamala who makes it, either here or in America, there are literally millions of potential Kamalas whose dreams never come true. Not because they lack the intelligence, but because they were never given the opportunity. It was denied to them not because they, or their parents did something wrong, but because they were born into poverty, and remained there.  And a key component that could have helped them rise above poverty, a good education, was out of their reach.

 

The Covid-19 pandemic has pushed many more poor children behind in their desire to get an education as I mentioned in my last column. And often for no other reason than not having a gadget that will allow them to continue to learn.

 

You don't have to travel to a remote area of India to see this great "unlearning" taking place.  Take Mumbai, the richest city in India. Millions come to the city looking for work. They find it, even though they struggle to find a decent place to live. But by being in this large metropolis, they have a chance to provide their children with an education they might not have received in the villages from where they originally migrated to Mumbai.

 

The backbone of education for poor children are the schools run by the municipal corporation. They have many deficiencies, but they guarantee a minimum level of education to these poor children.

 

Today, because of the pandemic, all these schools are closed.  Children who go to expensive private schools continue with their classes online. For the children who go to municipal schools, there is simply no option but to sit out the entire term.

 

An organisation called Pratham, which has worked for years in the area of education, recently conducted a survey for the municipal corporation to assess how many children were affected.  Out of 2,46,626 children studying in municipal schools, 81,603 could not access online classes. This is a huge number for a city like Mumbai, virtually one out of every three.

 

Amongst these, 52 per cent were children of migrant workers who had left the city with their families because they had no work. It is unlikely that these children will be able to pursue education in their villages. The survey also revealed that 76 per cent of students did not access to smartphones.

 

Even in Dharavi, a place that is recognised worldwide and is often the focus of media attention, 60 per cent of the students at one school that was surveyed had no smart phones.  The common refrain of parents was that when they had no money for food, how could they afford a smart phone.

 

Fortunately, the municipal corporation has decided to set up learning centres so that these students can attend physical classes. But this might already be too little, too late.

 

For me, personally, Dharavi has a special resonance. One of the things that struck me in 1999, when I was researching for my book "Rediscovering Dharavi", was the large number of schools in what is called Asia's largest slum. There were Tamil, Marathi, Urdu, Hindi and English medium schools.  Every family I interviewed, whatever their religion or caste, was determined to get their children educated. They saw this as the only way forward. 

 

I wonder today how many potential Kamalas have lost their chance to move ahead in their lives.

 

Girls and the 'digital divide'

Column in Mathrubhumi

(Translated in Malayalam)

 

In an earlier column, I described a family that lives on the pavement near my house in Mumbai.  The young girl, who became a mother at the age of 16, has a phone and is constantly watching something on it, or speaking to someone.  But it is unlikely that she is accessing any form of learning through that phone.  She is amongst millions of girls in India who have barely stepped into a school.

 

One of the long-term impact of this pandemic, for which there appears to be no end in sight, will be on literacy, particularly that of girls.

 

In recent years, there have been many centrally-sponsored programmes focussing on educating girls.  States like Kerala or Himachal Pradesh have invested generously in literacy programmes leading to positive results.

 

Yet, unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic is going to be a serious setback to all these efforts.

 

The sad reality is that despite investment and targetted programmes, millions of girls never enter a classroom.  Studies have shown that 30 per cent of girls from poor households have never attended school.

 

Although at the primary level, school enrolment has steadily increased, and on paper at least it is over 90 per cent, any disruption, such as the pandemic, can result in dropouts.  For poor families, the midday meal scheme was a very big attraction.  But now, with the closure of schools, midday meals have stopped thereby further diminishing chances of girls learning anything.

 

According to some recent studies, an estimated 20 per cent of girls will not be back in school as and when the lockdown lifts. The reasons for this could be many but mostly because families are impoverished, and also displaced from the places where they lived and worked, and where their children could go to a school.

 

Now that the national lockdown has been extended until August 31, and schools are not going to open until later, there is another factor that will impact girls, especially those from deprived backgrounds.

 

The "digital divide", where a large population cannot access the Internet or benefit from the spread of connectivity through mobiles, is also a gender divide.  Children all over India are expected to continue learning through online classes. But for that you need access.  And many poor families do not have smart phones or access to Internet.

 

Recognising this, some states have made special efforts to reach the children of the underprivileged by sending out teachers with smartphones or internet-ready devices, which can be used to teach groups of children.  But such a policy is not being followed uniformly across India.

 

As a result, girls will be the first to suffer as given the gender divide, families will make an effort to ensure that boys access online classes and will not necessarily make the same effort for girls.  A study in the last two years of children in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana found that 80 per cent of the girls surveyed had never accessed the Internet and 62 per cent had never used a computer.

 

If that is the reality even in two southern states, one can just imagine the situation in the northern states that are behind in most social development indicators. So the longer the pandemic continues, and with it the closure of schools, the larger will be the number of girls in India who will be missing out on education.

 

In the long-term, female literacy, and the education of girls is central to bringing about a real change in our society.  We cannot even speak of equality between men and women if one out of every two girls between the ages of 5 and 9 is illiterate in India today.

 

 

Quality matters

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Feb 16, 2014

  

The HinduPhoto: M.Karunakaran

Thanks to the unfortunate and virtually relentless reports of sexual violence against women in different parts of the country, the question of women’s safety has found a place in pre-election debates. Every sexist or gender-insensitive remark made by a politician is noted and the individual is asked to explain what he meant. Several politicians, including those from the Aam Aadmi Party, have been literally hauled over the coals for such remarks, and rightly so. Mainstream parties have been alerted and are being more careful.

Similarly, the issue of bodies like Haryana’s khap panchayats that have arrogated to themselves the right to pass judgment on all manner of things including who can and cannot get married, has come up for discussion. Political parties are now being asked to state explicitly their stand on such bodies. Is it really possible to “engage” with them? Can they, should they, be banned? How do we disempower them and ensure that the rule of law, as laid down in the Constitution, prevails?

Yet a much more pervasive and in some way more insidious way of keeping women back does not get addressed. No one asks the questions. And political parties feel no need to say anything about this. It is taken for granted that everyone is concerned, much like the issue of poverty; apparently so concerned that attention to the issue slips under the radar.

This is the issue of education, not just access to education, but more importantly the quality of education that our children are getting.

Every year since 2005, the Pratham Education Foundation has been conducting a survey. Covering 550 rural districts, the latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) reminds us yet again of the grim statistics of learning outcomes, based on assessing the ability of students to read, write and do simple arithmetic.

Between 2005 and 2013, although the enrolment of children in school has jumped from 93 per cent to 97 per cent, the quality of education has actually declined. For instance, a higher percentage of students today in Std. V are unable to read a textbook assigned to Std. II as compared to the figures from 2005. Similarly, more students of Std. VIII were unable to do simple division this time round compared to students of the same class in 2005.

How and why has this happened?

Internationally too India figures in the list of countries where there has been a perceptible drop in the quality of education. The 11th EFA (Education For All) Global Monitoring Report brought out recently by Unesco reveals that one third of all primary school age children do not learn the basics even if they go to school. The report points out that the goal of achieving universal primary education by 2015 is a long way off if the quality of what is taught is so poor.

Apart from those who are in schools, and yet learning very little, over half of all children out of school are girls. The problem with low quality education is that it compels parents, who believe education could pull them out of poverty, to send their children to private schools. They automatically equate such schools with a better quality of education. In India, the percentage of children enrolled in private schools is steadily increasing, even in the poorer states.

If forced to make a choice between a boy and a girl, most poor parents would spend their limited income on giving the boy a better quality education. Thus the long-term impact of poor quality education will inevitably lead to a larger percentage of girls either being pulled out of school, or being left to attend schools where they learn little.

All this then feeds into the vicious cycles of girls being given no option but to work in low-end jobs, get married young and become mothers before their time.

So, when so many questions are being asked of all political parties in this election, this is one that should be asked. Apart from access to education, what are they going to do about quality? For all its talk about education, and the allocation of additional resources, according to ASER, the quality of education has actually declined in the last decade. That does not speak very well of the current government.

Education is a vast and important subject, one that cannot be addressed adequately in this space. But the ASER report, with its devastating data, is a reminder of an issue that has to be brought to the forefront of debate during this season of talking heads. What could be worse than raising the hopes of a child and her parents with the promise of education and all it carries with it, only to have it dashed to the ground because the child comes out having learnt nothing that can carry her through to a better life?

(To read the original, click here.)

Let’s talk about men

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Sept 15, 2013

  

The HinduDocumentary film-makers (from left): Sanjay Kak, Rahul Roy, Amar Kanwar, and Saba Dewan at a press conference in New Delhi. Photo: S. Subramanium

A project that questions concepts of masculinity is more than welcome.

We write and talk about women’s rights, about violence against women, about stronger laws to “protect” women and about punishing the men violating these laws. But there is little discussion on what it means to be a man in today’s India. An on-going project titled “Let’s Talk Men” (www.letstalkmen.org) has come up with some interesting perspectives on this subject.

Has the understanding of being “masculine” changed even as women have begun to think of themselves differently from their mothers? Or are boys and men, barring a handful of exceptions, no different from their fathers and grandfathers? Has their view of women changed? Or do they continue to believe that women, whether they are mothers and sisters, or wives, are basically there to serve them?

Under the Let’s Talk Men project, launched in 1998, five filmmakers from South Asia — India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan — were encouraged to explore concepts of masculinity in their own countries. Now 15 years later, these filmmakers have followed up with another set of films.

I have seen Delhi-based filmmaker Rahul Roy’s film, Till We Meet Again. It returns to the four young men — Bunty, Sanjay, Sanju and Kamal from Jehangirpuri on the outskirts of Delhi — who featured in his first film. In 1999, when Roy made When Four Friends Meet, these four men were single. In the new film, all of them are married. The film explores how these men see their own lives, what they think of their wives, why they justify hitting their wives (something they did not support when they were single), and what they feel about the expectations of their families and society from them.

Such an exploration is particularly relevant at the present moment when there are so many questions being asked about the growing violence against women in the public space — although the greater violence women continue to experience in their homes has never resulted in such great outrage. What is it that makes men, who seem perfectly reasonable characters as the ones in Roy’s film, think it is acceptable that they should hit their wives because, as one of them says, that is the only way to make them understand?

Roy’s film raises questions around masculinity through the lives of these four men, all from the same class, living in a lower middle-class neighbourhood. Two of them have work and bring home an income while the other two are unemployed. Yet, the latter would never consider helping their wives with housework.

These men’s lives reflect the reality in many of our cities. In a milieu where the value of a man is measured by his ability to take care of his family, men who fail must fear that their “maleness” will be questioned. Yet, there is little in our educational system, or in the media, that seriously addresses these concepts. On the contrary, entrenched views of masculinity are being reinforced every day.

Discussions on “gender” tend to leave out men. We do not, for instance, make an effort to understand the impact of socialisation and family on the roles men are pushed to play. We do not know what is going on in the minds of men as more women get educated. Or why, despite education, the sexual division of labour persists within homes.

There is also a serious gap between what women want, and what men expect from them. In response to my last column, a young woman articulated this well: “What I experience as a college student is that there is a growing sense of unease among those who are comforted by the blanket of patriarchy, by the liberation of women. They feel that their space is being invaded and they feel threatened. What they don’t seem to realise is we are only taking back what was ours in the first place — the freedom to be oneself and chase one’s dreams.” Roy’s film suggests that young men today don’t believe that women were ever entitled to such freedom.

Clearly, there could not be a better time for a project looking at and questioning concepts of masculinity. But it is a project that needs to find a resonance in our homes, in our schools and colleges and in our work places.

(To read the original, click here.)

When girls fear school

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, December 12, 2010

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

The reasons for the high drop-out rate of girls are simple: Fear of corporal punishment, sexual abuse and the lack of basic amenities like toilets in schools.

Photo: D. Gopalakrishnan

Pathetic infrastructure...

Sometimes you hear a story, or see a person, and you cannot forget. Last month, I listened to a bespectacled middle-aged woman, dressed in a sari with a scarf tied around her head. She was speaking at a public hearing on “Gender, Equality and Education” in Hyderabad, organised by ASPBAE (Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education) and Asmita, a resource centre for women. In a voice choked with emotion, she narrated the tragic story of her 14-year-old daughter, Renuka.

Renuka was a student of AP Social Welfare Society Residential School at Shivareddypet in Ranga Reddy District of Andhra Pradesh. She was in Std V. According to her mother, she was keen to study even though she was older than the rest of the class. On February 21 this year, a girl screaming in her sleep set off panic in the dormitory. The teachers sleeping in the next room, who were in-charge of the hostel, beat the girls to stop them from screaming. Renuka apparently had a head injury and became unconscious. She was admitted to the government hospital and her family was informed. Incensed at what had happened, her brothers questioned the school staff and also spoke to the local press.

When Renuka recovered, her parents brought her back to the school. But the principal and the staff refused to take her back saying she had brought a bad name to the school. The parents continued to make efforts to get her readmitted. But Renuka was so disheartened that she poured kerosene on herself and attempted suicide. With 75 per cent burns, there was little chance of survival. Her distraught mother wants to know what crime her daughter had committed to get such treatment. A case has been registered against the teachers but you wonder how many more cases of corporal punishment are forcing young girls out of school.

Only half the women in India are literate. The government plans to change this drastically in the next two years and has launched Saakshar Bharat, a programme for adult literacy that will focus on women. It aims to raise overall literacy from 64 per cent to 80 per cent and reduce the gender gap between male and female literacy from the current 21 per cent to 10 per cent by 2012.

Root of the problem

But the problem of the low percentage of female literacy lies at the point when a girl, who wants to go to school, drops out. The reasons are often linked to poverty; parents prefer to keep daughters back and send sons to school as girls are more useful at home and at work. But increasingly, even when parents are ready to send their daughters to school, the girls cannot continue because of simple reasons that have nothing to do with the ‘software' of literacy.

There are millions of girls like Renuka who want to learn, but not at the cost of being beaten. Or sexually abused. Several respondents at the public hearing spoke of sexual abuse, particularly in residential schools where tribal children are sent, as a reason for a high dropout rate among girls. This is an aspect of education that needs to be monitored, documented and dealt with. What parent would risk sending a daughter to a school where she is beaten or sexually abused?

The ‘hardware' issue is a much more straightforward problem. Girls drop out of school, particularly when they hit puberty, because there are no toilets. If they exist, they are usually dysfunctional.

Lalithamma from Thamballapalle Mandal in Chittoor District of Andhra Pradesh gave a vivid picture of the absence of toilets and the impact on girls. Her organisation conducted a survey of 80 schools in the mandal. They found that 52 schools had no drinking water facilities and 57 schools had no toilets. Five schools had toilets but without doors or water. Girls were forced to use the open space behind the school. But as boys also accessed the same area, the girls could not go.

Lalithamma said girls sipped water through the day to avoid going to the toilet. Her data from just five schools makes horrific reading:

Thamballapalle High School: 172 girls, two toilets, no water.

Kannemadugu High School: 58 girls, two toilets, no water.

Renumakulapalle High School: 40 girls, one toilet, no water.

Gopidinne High School: 60 girls, two toilets, both not working.

Kosuvaripalle High School: 53 girls, one toilet, no water.

Worst still, these girls return to a hostel at the end of the day where again the toilet facilities are inadequate. They fear going out in the dark and often skip the meal to avoid having to defecate.

This is just a thumbnail sketch of the situation in one mandal in Andhra Pradesh. But it mirrors conditions in most parts of rural India. The situation is not that different in municipal and government schools in urban areas. Girls from such schools in Hyderabad also spoke of the absence of toilets. We want girls to go to school, get through primary school and persist in the higher classes. Yet how can they in such circumstances?

So while the corporal punishment and sexual abuse are issues that need to be investigated closely and documented, a beginning can at least be made by ensuring that there are working toilets for girls in schools. It is such an obvious point that it hardly needs to be made. And yet numerous surveys on girls and education bring out this one need. Why is it not being given as much importance as curriculum, teaching standards, shortage of teachers etc?

(To read the original, click on the link above)

Educating India

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Jan 24, 2010

The Other Half

The Annual Status of Education Report, 2009, is out… pointing out yet again that what stands between rural girls and a good education is often basic facilities like transport and proper toilets…

Photo: A. Muralitharan

Soldiering on: How long before they are forced to drop out?

Swati and Anita are two young women from rural Maharashtra. They have one thing in common. Both dropped out of school once they completed Standard VIII. They wanted to complete their schooling. Both spoke passionately to me when I met them about their desire to study. Even their parents wanted them to study further. But circumstances would not permit this.

Both girls faced an identical dilemma. While the school up to Standard VIII was in their village or close by, the high school was some distance away. The only way to go there was by the local State Transport bus. While going to school was not such a problem as it was during the day, at the end of the school day, they had to wait several hours before they could catch the bus back. If for some reason the bus was cancelled, and this would happen with alarming frequency, they would have had to walk back to the village in the dark, something their parents would not contemplate. Hence, the only option was to drop out of school. In contrast, the brother of one of the girls faced no such problem. As soon as he was through with his classes, he would hitch a ride on a passing truck and make his way back. This was not an option open to the girls.

Tragic situation

What is tragic is that both these girls are as bright as any you would meet in a city like Mumbai. The only reason they will not become the engineers and doctors of the future is because there is no reliable transport linking their village to the nearest school. And theirs are not remote villages in the interior of Maharashtra. Swati lives a mere hour away from Pune. If this is the story of Swati and Anita, think how many millions more like them must be chafing at being deprived for no other reason than a safe mode of transport.

We also know that many more girls drop out even before Standard VIII for another reason: the lack of toilets in schools. The latest ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) 2009, a comprehensive survey of government and private schools in 575 out of 583 districts in India, revealed that only 50 per cent of government schools have toilets and that four out of 10 government schools did not have separate toilets for girls. Even where there were separate toilets for girls, as many as 12-15 per cent were locked and only 30-40 per cent were “usable”. I visited a school in Bihar where toilets had been constructed but within days their doors had been stolen and the toilet pans smashed making them unusable. If girls dropout when they reach adolescence, it is often for no other reason than the lack of toilet facilities. Even in a city like Mumbai, the dropout rate amongst girls attending municipal schools is markedly higher than that of boys because of the absence of toilets for them.

The annual ASER study, facilitated by the NGO Pratham, is a constant and important reminder of the state of education in this country. In 2009, ASER surveyed 16,000 villages, 300,000 households and 700,000 children. There is nothing on this scale done by an agency outside government, hence its importance. But each year, when ASER results are made public, we are reminded that education is not just about quantity, or the number of children who enrol in school — a number that is increasing — but the quality of the education these children get. And that, although it is getting better in some states, is still shockingly poor.

Conducting simple reading and mathematics tests in schools, the survey reveals that a little over half of all children in Standard V in government schools cannot read a Standard II text book. This means a 10-year-old cannot read what a seven-year-old is supposed to be able to read. What then are these children learning even if they become a statistic showing increased enrolment and attendance in schools?

Disturbing trend

Precious little, it would seem. What they cannot learn in school, they do so by paying for private tuitions. One of the more disturbing statistics in the survey reveals that one in four children in Standard I in private schools is sent for private tuitions as are 17 per cent of Standard I students in government schools. Can you imagine that? Little six-year-olds being sent for private tuition. By the time they reach Standard VIII, over one third try and learn what they are clearly not taught in school through private tutoring. An analysis of the budget of poor people would reveal what a chunk of their earnings goes into such tuitions because they hold on to the belief that education will pull them out of poverty. But given the poor quality of education in these schools, their children will never be able to compete with those with ability to pay for better quality schooling.

Fortunately, not the entire ASER report is gloom and doom. One of the brighter moments in it is the fact that in Bihar, the state considered a basket case on most counts, the dropout rate for girls in the 11-14 age group has reduced from 17.6 per cent in 2006 to 6 per cent in 2009. So Bihar must be doing something right. In fact, one of the striking sights in Bihar today is of girls on bicycles, given by the government if they clear Standard VIII, going to the nearest high school.

The desire to ensure that children get a good education runs deep in most Indian families. Parents will sacrifice and save to invest in their children's future. Even poor families, including the homeless with no secure shelter, find a way of sending their children to school. The increase in the enrolment rate in India — 96 per cent of children between the ages of 6-14 are enrolled in school, government and private — is proof of that.

What urgently needs to be tackled is the quality of education, basic facilities like toilets and running water, and transport, particularly for girls. Even this will not suffice unless there is a notable change in the status accorded teachers who ultimately decide whether and what children learn. Instead of the inordinate amount of attention that continues to be paid to institutes of higher learning, or private institutions that promise to prepare rich children for studies abroad, something much more simple and basic can and needs to be done to educate India and Indians.

(To read the original article, click on the link above)