Girls missing again, this time in schools

A UNESCO report released today on gender gap in education puts India at the bottom, lower than Bangladesh and Myanmar and in the ranks of Et...

A UNESCO report released today on gender gap in education puts India at the bottom, lower than Bangladesh and Myanmar and in the ranks of Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea. But if the girls in a small village in southern Haryana ever get to hear it, they wouldn’t be surprised.

Thirty-two kilometres from the national capital, Sihi gaon sends its girls to government schools and saves its money to send the boys to expensive private schools. So stark is the discrimination that the local government schools can now be mistaken for being girls-only schools.


THE UNIFORM SAYS IT: Kuldeep Singh’s children. Renuka Puri.

Kuldeep Singh has seven children—five daughters and two sons. A sweeper/chowkidar, Singh sends all his five girls to government schools. However, in case of his seven-year-old son, he pays Rs 200 a month and even gave Rs 1,100 at the time of his admission in nursery two years ago. The youngest son, who is only a few months old right now, will also be sent to a private school, he informs.

Ask Singh’s wife about her daughters, and she says: ‘‘It’s good enough that they at least go to school, private schooling is a far-fetched desire.’’

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Ram Ratan Sharma, Block Education Officer, Ballabgargh 2, Faridabad, says enrolment this year has dropped by over 10 per cent in government schools while it is rising in the private ones. ‘‘Public schools are more attractive and most families can afford to have at least one child there. The son is obviously given preference,’’ he says.

The latest survey conducted by the Education Department of the Haryana government shows there are approximately 500 children at the primary level in each district who do not attend school. Faridabad has eight such districts. There is no scheme or programme through which girls are encouraged to attend school. Despite this, Singh’s daughters have big plans. One aspires to be a policewoman, another a singer and two others teachers. However, even this may not come true, for Singh—like the other residents of this village—will marry off his daughters as soon as a marriage proposal comes.

‘‘If I could, I would give a good education to all of them,’’ says Singh, ‘‘but the reality is that they have to get married soon and I can’t afford to educate them as well as marry them.’’

To avoid such a fate, Singh’s eldest daughter, 18, is determined to do a teaching or nursing course.

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Advocate Ashok Agarwal, who has filed a petition in the Chandigarh High Court on the poor standard of government schools in Haryana, says: ‘‘It’s easy to blame the public for having this mindset but they send their boys to public schools because they are English-medium and more attractive than government schools…If the government improves the infratructure, makes its schools more attractive and includes English, then even the girls will get to study in English.’’

Sharma promises this is on the cards, and that they are worried about the fall in enrolment in government schools.

In the meantime, Singh’s daughters are not letting the situation bog them down. They are making the best of it. Sounding too big for her 14 years, Poonam says: ‘‘There is no point in asking our parents to put us into private schools. We know they do not have the money and would rather spend what they have on our brother. They tell us that we will leave them and go one day whereas our brother will stay.’’

But their sarkari school, she insists, is very good. ‘‘We can do well from here too.’’