On the Road!

 A great deal of progress has been made in these villages in preventing or discouraging early, adolescent marriages. But, I would still keep hearing about this girl, or that, who had got married when she was 15,16, 0r 17. This remained a niggling question in my mind until that Eureka moment, while I was with the Deepshikha group – a group of 30 girls in Jagalpur sub-center.
This is an organized group that meets together for one hour each on Saturdays and Sundays to discuss health and social issues that affect their lives. The group meetings are facilitated by Anita, who underwent a 10-day training run by Unicef.
As an observer and participant in this particular meeting, I heard that this group has been in existence for several months now, but it has had its share of ‘floating’ population, as some girls have left to get married, while new entrants have come in after getting married into this village. It was evident that many of these girls had got married well before they had turned 18, and I couldn’t get clear reasons even though I probed.
Then the discussion turned to education, and I popped the question as to why girls were dropping out of school after Class 10, and not continuing to study further. That’s when it emerged that girls drop out of school because the senior secondary school is now in the next village which is 4 km away. Parents naturally dislike the idea of their daughters walking all the way, or hitching a ride. As a result, the girls stay at home, and as a natural corollary, are persuaded to get married.
The immediate answer was cycles ! If the girls had cycles, would they be able to continue schooling? When I offered this suggestion, there was an immediate, excited outburst of chattering. So, I went a bit further, and offered two cycles if they could guarantee that four girls would indeed attend Class 11-12. I certainly didn’t expect the group to burst out applauding, but they did, and it told me that this could well be the answer to empower these young girls, with mobility and freedom.
It was clear to me that a large scale project, to make cycles available, would have to be an essential ingredient in any rural initiative that Growth-for-All would roll out in the coming months.
( An interesting aside: none of the 30 girls has ever learnt or used a computer)

This entry was posted on Friday, August 8th, 2008 at 7:50 am and is filed under NGO, Inclusive Growth, Indian Economy, On The Road, Sensible Governance & Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.