ISSUES OF CONCERN

A ‘bridge’ brings teenage girls closer to schooling

Kulsum Mustafa

Shabbo, 12, hailing from a nondescript village in Hardoi, Uttar Pradesh (UP), had completely given up on her dreams after she, the eldest of five sisters, was pulled out of school barely two months after joining it. Her father Baitullah, a labourer earned just Rs 50-60 per day and could not afford the school fee. With a heavy heart she joined the other village girls, who worked at a nearby Zardozi (traditional embroidery done with gold and silver threads) centre. Ardous labour of seven to eight hours a day fetched her a meager sum, barely enough to ensure a square meal a day for the family.

The fact that the work affected her vision and the fine needles punctured her fingers hardly seemed to matter to anyone. Not even to Shabbo, who worked through the day and even at night without a break, without any rest – weaving dreams in shiny threads for others, while she herself was bereft of any hope. The only luxary she allowed herself occasionally was to ‘steal’ a few rupees form her daily earning and treat herself to golegappas  (a spicy snack) and an ice-lolly. Of course, for this she had to be prepared for the spanking if her father found out. Most of the time, he did not.

It was a hard life for a teenager but, frankly, Shabbo did not really mind it. She simply knew no better. But then one day something happened, that changed Shabbo’s world. It made her look at things with a different perspective. In 2008, a field worker came looking for ‘out-of-school’ girls to be enrolled in the Residential Bridge Course (RBC), a state government and UNICEF initiative.

Shabbo, who had faint but happy memories of her school days, showed her eagerness to join. “Ham to zindagi bhar bus kaam hi kartey reh gaye (I have only been doing work all my life)” was how she explained her emotions when she first heard of the RBC. The sorrow in her voice was quite palpable. Now that life was giving her another chance Shabbo welcomed the change with open arms. However, her parents, especially of Baitullah, were not ready to let her go. They were not sure how sending their daughter to the residential school would do her any good. Field workers had to make several visits to Shabbo’s home before her father finally agreed. They told him that the 11 months would transform his daughter into a young woman he would be proud of. Even Shabbo’s old school teacher and mother put pressure on him. Shabbo joined the first batch of RBC set up at Sarvodaya Ashram, Hardoi, along with 200 other girls selected from two blocks of Hardoi, namely Hariyanva and Pihani.

RBC has emerged as an effective strategy, both at the NGO and government level, for bringing ‘out-of-school’ girls to their age-appropriate class in school. It follows a curriculum that allows learning at a faster pace. At an RBC school, trained live-in teachers use a specially devised innovative educational curriculum to teach girls in the ages of 11-14 years. Over a period of 11 months, the students are brought to speed up with the studies of the primary classes up till Class Five, following a specific daily timetable for meals, studies and sports. Through intensive but interesting methods they are taught Hindi, English, Science, Maths and life-skills. Transition form one class to the other requires a minimum of one week where evaluation,  sharing, training and planning for the next session is conducted. Whenever needed, another week is added for clarifications and improvements in specific topics. The girls go home twice during the duration of the course. Besides the school in Hardoi, two more facilities have opened in the state one each at Gonda and Mall, the latter in the periphery of Lucknow, taking  the total number of RBCs in the state to three.

Whereas Shabbo knows that life will never be the same again outside the portals of the centre her  batch-mates, Soni, Ruby, Aruna feel exactly the same way. Aruna, in fact, has gathered the courage to tell her parents that she will not marry before she completes her intermediate. And Soni’s father, Jaichand, turns emotional every time he comes to meet her at the centre. “I cannot believe this smart young girl is my own timid Soni, I am happy she took this step,” he says. Jaichand had pulled her out of the village school because they were “wasting time and not teaching anything”. 

According to UNICEF education specialist Vinoba Gautam, the USP of the RBCs is the curriculum and the play methods used to teach the girls. “They are taught Hindi, Mathematics and Science and life skills. English is added in the class fourth curriculum. Poems are taught through group pebbles, stones and sticks. They are encouraged to develop leadership qualities besides life-skills,” he says.

The percentage of girls’ dropout is very high in UP, a state which has nearly a quarter of million children out of school. UNICEF has been an equal partner in the UP Government’s endeavour to bring girls back to school. Dwelling on the reasons for drop out, a UNICEF report cites extreme poverty, school at a far away distance from village, women (mother, sister) in the family being uneducated, girls entrusted with household responsibilities particularly minding younger siblings while parents go to work, concerns about safety and the poor quality of education imparted at government schools. So even as the RCB centers change the fortunes of girls like Shabbo or Soni there has to be a concerted move to tackling these hurdles that are bound to come in their way as they get into mainstream schooling. After all, that’s the only way the government can truly deliver the promise of Right to Education.

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A teacher becomes an inspiring agent of social change

- Ajit Panda

A group of more than 50 students are waiting in the classroom. Girls out-number boys. They are waiting for ‘Sir’. Sir rushes in, apologizing for being seven minutes late, and the English class immediately gets underway.

The classroom is in a middle school at Bodra Village in a remote part of the tribal-dominated Nagri Block of Chhattisgarh’s Dhamtari District. It is located 160 km from Raipur, the state capital. But none of the students who were waiting for Sir are from the school. They range from Standard IX to graduation level, and come not only from Bodra Village but from surrounding villages as well. The class begins at 8 am and ends before the middle school timing of 9.30 am. It is a special English Learning class for rural children, to make them job-ready. It is being run free of cost by Mahendra Kumar Borjha, who is the head teacher of the middle school.

The day begins at 7.30 for Borjha, who hails from the Halba Tribe and lives some 14 km away from the village. “I don’t want these children to suffer and face the same situation that I had to at their age. English should not be a barrier for them while appearing for exams, jobs and interviews,” says the 45-year-old teacher. “I am not preparing them only for government jobs; rather, I think they should become self-reliant in whichever field they will choose,” he adds.

“We are learning grammar as well as spoken English, which makes us bold and confident,” says Phuleshwari yadav, who is pursuing a BSc Degree and regularly attends Borjha’s classes. Like her, many students reach the village by bicycles.

There are 212 households in the village, and of these, 150 families belong to Scheduled Tribes. The village has two schools – the primary school has 87 students while the middle school has 55. For higher secondary education, the village children go to nearby Farsia Village. Inside the middle school compound there is a beautiful garden. Besides flowering plants, it also has a vegitable patch and fruit-bearing trees. Water comes from a bore-well. There are separate toilets for boys and girls, and one for special children as well.

But this was not the case a few years ago. There was just a school building with a toilet. “The credit for whatever development is seen today goes to Mahendra Borjha, who joined four years ago,” explains Dikesh Som, Borjha’s collegue, who has been teaching at the school since 2006. “When I joined here, there were only two teachers and infrastructure was an issue. I took that as a challenge. Besides writing to the administration, I involved the villagers by inviting them to our Independence Day celebrations. I sent invitation cards to each one. All of them came. I requested them to contribute for the development for the school and Rs 50000 was collected,” explains Borjha.

“So we got water connections put in around the campus, including the toilets. And with the villagers contributing labour, we leveled the ground and planted the garden. We now grow our own vegtables and use them for our mid-day meals; aftera few years, our trees will yield fruit. We also succeeded in getting furniture for the students, as well as a compound wall and more toilets built,” Borjha adds.

Borjha shares his chamber with other members of the staff, both teaching and non-teaching. What is unique is that each one has a table, even the sweeper and the Grade Four employee. And on each table, there’s a name plate. It has made a world of difference. “Our head teacher is a great man; he says all of us should have name plates as we are all contributing equally to the school and education. He has not only motivated us but also the students and their parents,” says K.L. Kashyap, the Grade Four employee.

And Borjha’s initiatives have borne extraordinary fruit. Of the five students from the school who took the National Talent Search Examination last year, three have been deemed eligible for a stipend of Rs 500 till Std XII. In the Open School examinations, ten of the 11 students who participated emerged successful. Small wonder that this little oasis of education has become the talk of the region!     

Infant Death

The mounting death toll of infants in Cuttack’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Post Graduate Institute of Pediatrics Hospital — commonly known as the Sishu Bhawan — coupled with the dire situation in Melghat on the Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh border, where about 450 infants die every year, is a stinging indictment of the state of health care in the country.

Odisha’s Sishu Bhawan, the largest child hospital in the state, is a picture of neglect — suffering from infrastructural deficiencies. The rising death toll has brought to the fore Naveen Patnaik-led state government’s reluctance to address problems plaguing the health care sector. Now, it is left to the state and the Centre to jointly work out a solution and avert such a crisis in future.

Melghat in Maharashtra, too, is a victim of state apathy for years. In the absence of doctors, the Korbu tribals resort to a scary practice called damma — where a crying infant is given burn marks with a sickle. Malnourishment is rampant here and even new generation parents, who are aware that damma is not a scientific cure to a bloated stomach, are helpless. This then explains how Maharashtra, considered the richest state in the country, has turned its back on the marginal and underprivileged, letting them die at such an early stage in life. Currently, India spends only 1.04 per cent of its GDP on public health, compared to 3 per cent in China and 8.3 per cent in the United States. For a country, with the highest population growth rate, this minuscule percentage of government expenditure on something as essential as health leaves the vast majority of Indians vulnerable to death and disease. The high rate of infant mortality goes on to prove a criminal lack of primary health care centres and an overburdened referral system of hospitals. Little wonder that according to the World Health Organization, India ranks at a lowly 112th position among 190 countries, lower than strife-torn Iraq and Syria, and way below neighbouring Sri lanka. Two successive Union Budgets have steered away from the commitment to national health — in 2013-14, health care expenditure was slashed by nearly 20 per cent and was marginally increased in 2015-16. Consequently, the poor have found it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to rely on government services.

The spate of infant deaths comes on the heels of the NDA government’s recently announced plans to increase public health investment to 2.5 per cent of the GDP by 2020, with 70 per cent of it to be allocated to boost the primary health care system. Of the Indian states with high neonatal deaths, Madhya Pradesh and Assam are the worst, followed closely by Odisha. Even today, diarrhoea and pneumonia are the biggest killers of children in India, which claim 20 infants per 1000 live births. It flies in the face of the incumbent government’s stated objective of putting in place a universal health-care system.A radical overhaul of the National Health policy has become an imperative, given the precarious conditions at the grass roots public health systems. A multi-pronged strategy that also takes into account basic amenities like clean drinking water, a nutritious diet and medicines should form an integral part of the government’s thrust on reducing infant mortality. Such a strategy should include not just the villages, but also the sprawling urban slums and tenements, where children lose their lives to diseases which can be prevented at the outset.