Rajasthan’s Invisible Middle

This is a ground report on Educate Girls’ mission to focus the lens on ten million learners in the next ten years.

Twelve young girls are peering intently at a book on the ground before them, one displayed before every two girls in the outer courtyard of a local house, in the dry and bleak landscape of Kanwarpura in Rajasthan’s Jaipur district.

Standing before them and holding forth is their prerak (or mentor) Rama Chowdhury, 24, a postgraduate in the social sciences from Rajasthan University who gently but firmly explains the myriad livelihood opportunities and career choices the girls have before them once they earn their Class X or XII pass certificate. 

A few minutes into the session all eyes turn towards 31-year-old Renuka, a blaze of colour in her full traditional attire, face covered with a ghunghat, who comes in and joins the group quietly.

The mother of two has recently and belatedly in life decided to further her education by clearing the Class 12th open school examination with the support of her husband and his family. She has earned her 10th grade certificate already and after tackling her gamut of daily responsibilities at home, she makes her way to Rama’s camp to prepare for her upcoming Grade 12 exams. If 31 sounds a trifle old to readers for school-level examinations, it doesn’t seem to bother the learner in the least!

A Future Without Hope

Renuka is one of 11,000 girls in the state who have decided to give education a second shot through the state’s open school system with the support of Mumbai-headquartered nonprofit Educate Girls’ Pragati after dropping out of school over the years for one reason or the other. 

In the early 2000s, the challenge before the state and the nonprofits working in it was getting families to educate their girls at all. At the time, the RTE was not in place and the out-of-school girl was a looming problem across India including the most populous states of Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

From 2007 - soon after the nonprofit came into being - Educate Girls worked very closely with the state government to ensure that parents across communities in the state of Rajasthan allow their girls to study at all, a massive challenge in its highly patriarchal society. The RTE 2009 provided a huge push to its efforts.

In 2019, Educate Girls, which now has over 3000 total employees, was picked as the first project out of Asia by TED’s Audacious programme with the aim of empowering more than a million girls to enter the classroom. It also found that almost 40 percent of the out-of-school girls were in 5 percent of India’s villages, a very high concentration. Over the last 16 years, all these joint efforts have borne results including in Rajasthan and the other three states where gross enrolment ratios for girls in primary school are now touching almost 100 percent. 

But even as Rajasthan celebrated bringing girls into school, it soon found that the real challenge lay in keeping them there. Of every ten girls who joined the school system, almost six would drop out in due course. On every field trip, Educate Girls founder and the force behind the nonprofit Safeena Husain who spends almost equal amounts of time in the field as in the headquarters in Mumbai, found she met hundreds of young girls who enrolled, completed their education till Class 8 or so and dropped out in the later years. Many appeared to have lost hope and were staring at a future like their mothers and grandmothers, where they had little agency over their lives. 

Safeena says that it was like coming full circle, a repeat of what they had previously grappled with, except with an older age group. The team had a brand new problem on their hands and began to look for possible solutions. At a countrywide level, a total of 91 million girls are in what is loosely called NEET (not in education, employment or training) with no avenues for entering the formal economy or getting an entry-level job. 

Pragati is Born

It was after the problem and its magnitude became clear that almost eight years ago Safeena and her team began to think about how to design a programme that would overcome many of the barriers these girls routinely faced. 

Centre-based models of the kind some other nonprofits in India were running in many geographies to which the prospective student has to travel are highly capital intensive and can cater to at best a few hundred, not lakhs or millions of girls. “The centre-led models work in semi or peri-urban regions, not in deep rural” argues Safeena. 

The girls needed a “return to school” option within touching distance of their homes, that allowed them time to do their other daily duties, allowed them to pick subjects of their interest so they did not fail when they took exams and a role model or prerak who convinced the wider family that the effort was worthwhile and ensured they got all the requisite paperwork done for the learner to be able to join the open school system. Moreover, they needed both hand-holding and peer support to help them overcome the gaps they invariably developed during their years of no schooling. 

Educate Girls’ Pragati model has evolved after several iterations, designed to pull in learners who have fallen off the map in the remotest parts of the state. Close to 465 preraks, all of whom are graduates, are running camps across the state. At the camps, the girls in the local areas congregate and prepare for their upcoming exams. Study material and guidance are provided by the prerak and the girls are encouraged to master the curriculum through peer learning and support. The non-punitive approach, no looking down or talking down to the girls or making fun or light of their abilities ensures that both the quick and slow learners stay engaged and work in collaboration unlike the formal school system, which can often alienate the weaker students. Educate Girls has partnered with a few state-focused nonprofit partners to spread the word and enhance efficacy. More hands and feet on the ground. 

In 2022 and 2023, over 4309 girls took the Class 10 certificate exams and to the surprise and delight of the Pragati team, over 3101 cleared them.

It Takes Two to Tango

Where the state governments in Rajasthan have stolen a march in the last two decades is the adoption of a very flexible - unlike many peers - open school policy where eligibility criteria are at a minimum. Barring an identity card and a transfer certificate, the girls don’t need much else to enrol. The range of subjects is vast, allowing the girls to pick and choose what interests them.

Ashok Meena, nodal officer for the state open school system at the government senior secondary school in Nayla, has valuable insight. He says that two things have happened hand in hand to give a fillip to the open school system: one is the Shiksha Setu scheme wherein the educational fees for girls and women who register for the state open school system are being paid by the Women and Child department since July 2020  as many families would not enrol their girls otherwise and the second is the structure provided by Pragati which is helping many girls actually pass the exam.

“The formal state school system has no way to support the learning of girls or any students who have dropped out” points out Meena. So in the past, even when girls did enrol, they often failed to clear the exams, leading to disappointment, loss of hope and a drop in further enrollments. Now, post Pragati’s support, not only has the number of girls enrolling for Class 10 exams doubled, but the pass percentage has shot up, drawing in even larger numbers. From “I can’t do it”, the narrative, he feels, has changed to “I can do it”.

According to Safeena, Shiksha Setu and the payment on behalf of the girls by the state has been a “game changer”. She argues that the state’s highly accommodative policy has helped Pragati grow exponentially: from 376 in 2021 when it began to 11,000 in a matter of three years, setting the stage for the thousands to grow to lakhs and then millions. Meanwhile, Educate Girls is in the process of signing a MOU with Maharashtra and is working to tackle this problem with government officials in UP, Bihar and MP although these states are in a more nascent stage

Second Shots

It’s hard to enumerate the myriad reasons why girls in the state dropout of school. In most cases, girls are forced to drop out to help out at home or to take up menial jobs to supplement the meagre family incomes. At both the Pragati camps we visit, I meet over two dozen girls who confide their life stories: the common thread running in most: poverty and refusal or lack of interest by parents to support their studies. 

Societal pressure is one of the leading reasons girls are forced to drop out of school in higher grades. Decisions and actions of most parents are led more by “what people might say” than their own convictions. In sharp contrast to the cities and towns in India where girls are permitted to wander more freely once they are no longer children or are in their late teens, the opposite holds true in rural communities. “At 5 and 6, the girls are free like the boys but once they attain puberty, roaming freely is heavily frowned upon by the village elders and is even associated with loose morals. Log Kya kahenge is the worry (what will people say)”, explains Safeena.

In many cases, practicality dictates. If a girl’s sister or friend who accompanies her on the long walk to secondary school - often at a fair distance from home - is married off or stops attending school for any reason, the other girl drops out as well. In an environment where crimes against women are par for the course, many parents opt to keep girls indoors post puberty for their personal safety. “The trade-off between higher education and personal safety is a no brainer for a majority” adds nodal officer Meena.

With uneducated parents and a mother who stayed unwell, Komal (name changed), a keen student in Kanwarpura, dropped out of school in Class 7  to manage the house, cook, clean and look after her parents and three brothers. Her father was a daily wage earner and she took on menial and cleaning jobs and stitching clothes for women in neighboring houses to supplement the family income for the last five or six years. More recently, one of her elder brothers got a job as a shop assistant and introduced her to Rama and Pragati. Although she hasn’t held a book in six years, Komal tells me she is excited at the second chance of breaking out of a vicious poverty cycle that seemed relentless by earning her Class 12 certificate. She confides to this writer that she harbors a dream of becoming a fashion designer and converting her love for fabrics and stitching into a profession at some stage. For now, she’s pinning her hope on her prerak and Pragati’s support to help her realize it.

If Komal represents the spirit of the young girls one comes across, Renuka is a living example of what can be achieved if one puts one’s mind to it. She gave up her studies when she was married at the age of 14 and was sent to live in her marital home. Spirited and determined, she runs a thriving dairy business with a few buffaloes she manages single-handedly, which helps her earn around Rs 35,000 every month, an amount higher than her husband. With her in-laws and husband’s support, Renuka recently earned her Class 10 certificate and is preparing for Class 12. Her own daughter, she declares, will earn a college degree even before the thought of marriage crosses anyone’s mind. She has no intention of letting history repeat itself, she tells me.

Follow The Leaders: The Preraks and other stories

In any room full of women in semi urban Rajasthan, Monica Pareek, will stand out for a variety of reasons. Married at 21, one of four sisters, she had done her graduation and was more educated than the 12th pass boy she married. With the support of a highly progressive husband and in-laws, she enrolled and managed to do her Bachelor in Education (BEd) and then a Master’s in English, studying for four years despite having her first child within 18 months of her marriage. In 2018, Monica had her second child but she took up a job as a teacher in a private school at a monthly salary of Rs 10,000 as she wanted to put her education to some use. Finding it hard to cope with managing the kids and her job, she quit but started a beauty parlor in her village. Her parlour soon started doing well, she had a third baby but it still rankled her that she was not putting her education to good enough use. 

In 2022, upon learning of Pragati, she decided to become a “prerak” - one of 450+ across the programme -  to help girls with a second chance at their studies. Now, with her parlor, Monica earns more than her husband, has the full support of her mother-in-law and is preparing for the government’s teacher eligibility test (TET), in the hope of securing a permanent government job. Ten of her girls cleared the Class 10 exam last year and she is busy preparing her new batch of 27 girls to take their open school exam this year. With Monica’s spirit and determination, I tell her I can bet anything that she will make it to principal at a state government school by the time we meet again! We meet at her mother-in-law’s house  - who tells me she’s never seen the four walls of a school in her life but sees no reason why her daughter in law should not be highly accomplished - in Khijuriya during an ongoing camp on a sunny January morning.

Equally inspiring is the story of Manju Devi Koli, the sarpanch of Nayla, a small village on the outskirts of Jaipur who dropped out of school at the end of Class 6 due to the extenuating circumstances at home, got married and moved to the village she is now the sarpanch of with the full support of her husband and in-laws.

Koli is sitting in her office in Nayla, a building she physically helped construct as a MNREGA laborer in 2006-07, a fact she takes pride in revealing. Her phone rings incessantly, a testimony to her importance in the community, as she guides her lot on how to secure their Aadhar cards, get a gas or electricity connection or any other government provided amenities. “If without an education I have reached the position I have, I sometimes think of what might have been possible if I had continued my education at the right juncture”, she says a trifle wistfully. 

Although Manju at 37 years had technically crossed the age limit to join a Pragati camp, she cleared the Class X exam in April 2023 with its support and has since acted as a role model for almost 45 young girls in Nayla to join the movement. Having tasted blood, post 2025 - after she completes her term as sarpanch - she has full intentions of taking her Class 12 exams, has joined a self help women’s group and harbors ambitions of learning to work comfortably with technology under the guidance of her elder son.

Over an hour-long conversation, she holds forth on how she is working to convince her own family and all members of her community to give higher weightage to the education of girls than that of boys. Although she herself has two sons, she is determined to educate the girls in her wider family, ideally a notch higher than the boys. Change, she argues, must begin at home!

Change is Everywhere Including in the Air

Even as I try to come to terms with the number of heart-tugging stories I have come across among the 30-35 girls I have met over two days, perhaps the best news is that one can even smell change in the air. Not only are the girls and married women joining the camps, but the families of many seem highly supportive. That the days of girls accepting with resignation whatever treatment was meted out is a thing of the past is evident through the instances of stories like Aanchi. Gentle, meek and submissive is fast going out of the window!

But what is gratifying is that women like Monica and Renuka envisage a very different life trajectory for their girls and progeny. Towards the end of our chat, Monica introduces me to her sparkly eyed 6-year-old daughter who she affectionately refers to as her “gudiya” (doll) and who, she says, has already announced her plans of becoming a doctor, revealing an ambition far ahead of any female member of the family going back several generations. Renuka says marriage is not even up for discussion for her 14-year-old daughter until she completes her college degree and has a clear career path charted out.

Whether their dreams for their daughters eventually convert into reality remains a while away to be seen but the very fact that the next generation has the unequivocal support of their predecessors tells me change is inevitable: there is no force more powerful than a woman determined to rise. 

(Reporting from Nayla, Khijuriya and Kanwarpura in Rajasthan.)