“Mujhe padhna hai or ek achi Doctor ban na hai kyuki hamare gaanv me doctor nahi hai or na hi hospital hai” (I want to study and become a good doctor because there are no doctors and hospital in my village). This was a small girl of around 7-8 years saying to me when I visited a village nearby my place.
India is a country where girls are deprived of their rights, and some of them do not even get to see this world. Right from the day of her birth, a girl faces a lot of criticism and is treated like an unwanted.
Education seems to be a difficult task for the girls in the rural areas because of the mindset of the village people. A girl faces a lot of barriers to get proper education in rural areas if her parents are of backward thinking. Their thinking is such because they themselves are illiterate and are bounded by old customs of not sending girls to schools.
The schools have fixed timings and those hours are the peak hours of work in a girl’s household life and this is the most common barrier that the girls face as she has to do the household work and even have to go to their fields and help their parents. To some extent parents are also to be blamed for this because they do not let their child to go the school and receive proper education.
In India we have a less number of female teachers and girls are more likely to attend school if they have female teachers because they are comfortable with them and even parents are not hesitant in sending their girl child to school.
One of the major barriers is the distance problem faced by the girls. Every one of us has seen that children in rural areas have to walk kilometers to reach their schools and it becomes a difficult task for girls to walk long distances as most of the girls are physically weak. To curb this problem, government should open more schools in the villages at proper sites which are easily accessible by girls.
Inadequate school facilities like toilets, drinking water, playgrounds and poor infrastructure also contribute hugely in being a barrier for girls. Majority of schools do not have a toilet or even if they have then it is in pathetic condition. Improper sanitation facility even creates problem for girls who are in their menstrual period. Poor drinking water facilities also keep away the girls from going to school.
We should not just sit in a closed room and discuss about such serious issues, but we should reach out to the rural areas with the help of the government and NGOs and work in harmony with everyone to see the future of our country to read, write and understand i.e. to get proper basic education.
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