Essay: ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ India’s focus on girl child education

Over the years, the number of incentives and schemes the government has introduced to address the lack of girls in schools have been plenty. Manjrekar writes about the ‘70s when the focus was on domestic violence and women’s representation and employment (2003, p. 4577). She also pointed out how in the 1986 policy ‘gender’ was markedly absent in the content and process of school education whereas the National Curriculum Framework in 2000 had a clear-cut position which embodied a break from the rhetoric and approach of earlier policy documents. But Indian policy has come a long way since then (Manjrekar, 2003, p. 4578).
The Right To Education Act (RTE) in India was passed in 2009 which made primary education for children aged six to fourteen compulsory and free. Intending to make education a fundamental right, but it’s concern for ‘inputs’ into the system compromised on quality of education (Juneja, 2013, p. 201). Non-enrolment of girls still remained an issue in Indian schools (Rajput, 2013, p. 32). Inadequate teacher training appeared as a gap in the Act’s implementation (Rajput, 2013, p. 34).
The Mid-Day Meal Scheme (MDM) since the 1990s has been implemented to boost enrolment rates through providing free meals at schools (Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government, 2019). Apart from gender-neutral programmes which targeted the class-based inequality in public education, one prominent female-centric education programme, was launched in 2015 by the Government of India called, ‘Beti Padao and Beti Bachao’ (B3P) or ‘Educate the daughter, save the daughter’ (Gupta, et al., 2018).
In India, ‘gender’ has political implications, and is used increasingly as a campaign tool which hinders any real development change on the ground (Gurumurthy, et al., 2016). The intention of the B3P was to address the skewed sex ratio, protection and the education of the girl child (Government of India, 2019).
Rohini and Shankar point out that boys in higher education tend to be diversified across streams and girls tend to be concentrated in some streams, in South India in particular they found, “classrooms filled with girls,” where girls’ enrolments exceeded that of boys (2012, p. 244). Parents showed reluctance to exposing girls to new streams and this was connected the costs of general and professional courses (Sahni & Shankar, 2012, pp. 247-249). The high-cost of engineering and medical courses prevented parents from allowing girls to pursue these courses, the same bias they found extended into employment markets (Sahni & Shankar, 2012, pp. 247-249).
They pointed out that despite seats being under reservation for girls there was a lack of inclusiveness in engineering courses towards girls, girls seemed to utilise ladies’ quotas resulting in an engendered participation in professional courses (Sahni & Shankar, 2012, pp.
251-253). Das and Desai affirmed that an increase in education hasn’t translated into an increased work participation for women in India (Sahni & Shankar, 2012, pp. 251-253).
Peggy Froerer’s research showed that girls’ education related aspirations with the available chances of realising them were largely concerned with the social and economic constraints and conditions that were outside their control in Central India (2012, p. 344). It was revealed that the girls’ and parents’ perception of education were different, in Adivasi communities it was found that cultural distance from the mainstream also contributed to the ‘backwardness’ of the communities (Froerer, 2012, pp. 344-45).
Srinivasan highlights the girls’ experiences of gender discrimination in Tamil Nadu, highlighting the idea of female ‘unwantedness’. These feelings of ‘unwantedness’ are experienced by girls from a young age and the village where this study was based, girls called the village ‘Yamakundam’ or the ‘abode of Yama’, a Hindu god of death (Srinivasan, 2014, p. 237).
Srinivasan shows through excerpts from interviews undertaken the girls’ concern over being teased and harassed by boys from school, the girls’ also highlighted the difference between how their brothers were treated at home (Srinivasan, 2014, p. 237). Srinvisan brings into consideration a different point in the debate over education which is how in Tamil Nadu, the girls must ‘bargain with patriarchy’ wherein ‘unwantedness’ is placed beside and in relation to son preference (2014, p. 240).
Rao writes about the vast religious and caste differences or the role of ‘culture’ in the gendered educational terrain in Indian villages (Rao, Nitya, 2010, p. 170). She says attendance amongst the lower castes and Muslims remain low, a school in the Scheduled Tribe (ST) hamlet were unfinished, and in that particular village it was a veranda of the chairperson in the village (Rao, Nitya, 2010, p. 174).
She talks about the teacher attitudes and absenteeism in the ST hamlet, affecting the children who were enrolled but would not attend school (Rao, 2010, pp. 174-5). The teacher’s response was that he faces a lack of infrastructural and parental support (Rao, 2010, pp. 175). Rao writes about the case of dual enrolments where students were enrolled in public schools for mid-day meals and other benefits while they were enrolled at private school for quality education (2010, p. 175).
Yuko Tsujita conducted a case study in a Delhi slum to look at the factors that prevented children from gaining access to education (2013, p. 348). Tsujita pointed out an important factor that development actors often forget, in developing countries where migration from rural to urban areas are determined by opportunity and infrastructure (2013, p. 348). Dislocation of children limits their access to education, they leave their schools in rural areas and are unable to pick up where they left off or start again in an unfamiliar urban territory (Tsujita, 2013, p. 348).
It was found that the phenomenon of ‘nowhere children’ was particularly more prevalent among boys than girls who neither go to school nor do they work (Tsujita, 2013, p. 351). It was found that children in wealthier households were more likely to go to school for a longer amount of time and were less likely to drop out, girls attended school more than boys and that boys were more susceptible to their peers’ bad behaviour (Tsujita, 2013, p. 353). This underlines one of the main gaps in policies around gender, the absence of addressing masculine pressures (Bhana, 2009).
Parents whose sons were influenced by their fellow students and weren’t regular to school expressed concern that they were developing habits like drinking and called out their parents for being illiterate alternatively girls benefitted with directed government schemes that gave
them free textbooks, uniforms, i.e. 73.4% of the girls who were attending (Tsujita, 2013, p. 353).
The National Family Health Survey (2005-06) revealed that ‘not interested in studies’ was the commonly cited reason for dropping out for children between 6 and 17 years in India (Tsujita, 2013, p. 354). Tsujita also pointed out that complex admission process and the short window of time for admission prevented access to education among slum children, because they didn’t have adequate identification or had no birth certificate, only 39.9% of the children were found to have a birth certificate (2013, p. 355).
While we talk about education the politics of gender in education, we often forget that there is the transgender community which finds barely any mention in development policies and agendas (Rajkumar, 2016, pp. 16-23). Even this essay glosses over this issue due to the lack of in-depth research in this regard. Rajkumar highlights the low enrolment rates and high dropout rates among transgenders in India, he suggests that while the third gender is a significant legal recognition it can become a societal setback for the community, teachers too aren’t trained to handle these situations, and their safety still remains a major concern (Rajkumar, 2016, pp. 16-23).
Quantity or quality? The scope of Indian education policy
The study of enrolment and completion rates alone could be seen as the two ends of a spectrum. Between the two lies attendance rates which largely remains problematic and neglected, while enrolment rates have improved attendance rates worsened over time especially in the case of children from impoverished households (Chatterjee, et al., 2018, pp. 100-01). There are multiple issues that manifest when attendance rates are looked at which development actors still don’t know how to tackle.
Chanana describes the impact of globalisation on gender and higher education and says that women are assumed to be less likely involved in areas that are considered the frontrunners in the new economy and market and are subsequently assumed to at lower levels even if they do make it to the field (Chanana, 2007, p. 590).
The private institutions Chanana says were quick to respond to the new demands and that it led to the devaluation of subjects in the Humanities and Social Sciences in India. She explains that family and education institutions are sites of social reproduction and they communicate the binary opposition of femininity and masculinity to little girls and boys through socialisation, therefore it leads to a conception of “feminine” roles and “feminine” subjects (Chanana, 2007, p. 591).
A report on the India’s primary school education policies and outcomes between 2005 and 2011 was published in 2018 stated that while the dropout rate had decreased between 1960 and 2005 the proportion of dropouts was still quite high (Chatterjee, et al., 2018, p. 99). The report insisted that the actual data of school-going children, the performance of students, school level infrastructure and the quality of teachers should also be considered rather than enrolment alone(Chatterjee, et al., 2018, p. 99).
Kingdon pointed out that while India had 22% of the world’s population it still had 46% of the world’s illiterate people and a substantial proportion of global out-of-school children and youth population with youth and adult literacy rates where it lagged behind most of the other developing countries surpassing only Sub-Saharan Africa (Chatterjee, et al., 2018, p. 99).
Rekha Kaul calls education an ‘arena of conflict’ bringing us back to the primary debate which boils down in to how we understand gender, how development actors conceive gender and frame structures and policies to suit those definitions (2015, p. 225). In a neo- liberal democracy this process becomes even more apparent, as Kaul rightly puts it, “Gender doesn’t operate in isolation but in conjunction with other social categories,” (Kaul, 2015, p. 230).
The way forward is to bridge these gaps that still seem unclear (Kaul, 2015, p. 231). Unterhalter says, “gender so far has been viewed as merely the number of boys and girls progressing through a school system,” (Kaul, 2015, p. 230). Introducing a gender-sensitive curriculum and making gender equality in education more than a campaigning tool means going to the grassroots and pulling the weeds out first.
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