Hardly, 20 kilometers away from my urban, upmarket residence, I was at a government primary school at Chithara, Dadri. As head, communication, with an organisation that works in the field of primary education, I was on a regular visit to see the implementation of the program in this school. 

As I was talking to one of the teachers, three teenage girls approached me, wanting to talk to me in private. After introducing themselves, they asked me who I was and what I was there for. Then one of them asked me when am I planning to marry? A little surprised at this sudden, off the track and a silly (I thought it was) question, I laughingly replied that I am already married and have a daughter their age. 

They were shocked. “How could you be married and wearing jeans?”, one of the girls questioned. 

Failing to frame an immediate reply to her question, I switched the conversation to their studies and family and what do they like about the school. They told me that they would like to study and would like to be confident like me (and I was flattered).

This small conversation made me curious about what the younger girls in the school think of education. And I asked a few of them to come aside. Soon, I was surrounded by ten-fifteen of them- all in the age group of 10–12. 

One 12-year-old, a class four student, shared that it is going to be her last year in the school. Youngest of four siblings, she lost her father to alcoholism; her mother, an illiterate, now works as farm labour; Her eldest brother left the family to fend for themselves after he got married and the one younger to him beat his sisters every day under the influence of alcohol. Her sister, just a year older to her, has already left the school and takes care of the house and she, too, feared to be taken off the school next month. 

From her friends and teachers, I got to know that she is not another girl in the school, she is the sports star of the school who represented her school recently at a state-level championship, and she aspires to be a Police officer. 

From her friends and teachers, I got to know that she is not another girl in the school, she is the sports star of the school who represented her school recently at a state-level championship, and she aspires to be a Police officer. 

Most girls in the school had similar stories. Most have parents who have hardly completed their primary schooling and are not interested in educating their children either. 

As these girls shared their aspirations with me – some wanted to become doctors, some teachers, and some police officers—I started feeling helpless. I didn’t know how I could help them, how to give them tips to convince their parents for letting them continue their education. Education is such a basic right and why their parents would not want these children to study and do something meaningful in their lives!

It is the 21st century, we are already in 2020!, and I have been reading, and writing, about India’s 5 trillion economy dream and here I was surrounded with these innocent girls, who in these so-called advance times of Artificial Intelligence, are losing their chance to pursue their basic studies. 

The visit to the Dadri school has stayed with me, making me think, or rather question- my ideas of social-economic progress the country has achieved. Barely, 40 km from the national capital, I found myself in a world that seems to be still stuck in a primitive era—where little girls have primitive notions of their role as a woman shaped by none other than their parents. 

Will they ever be able to break the glass ceiling and realise their dreams or they will soon realise the futility of dreaming in the patriarchal society like their mothers. The questions continue to haunt me

(The writer is Communications Head at Sampark Foundation. Views expressed are personal)