5.3 The Case of India

A. Context
B. Factors
C. Recommendations

A. Context

a. General

Coming into being in its present form in 1947, India, to an even greater extent than most other countries, defies useful generalisation contextual and otherwise. This federal republic, comprising 22 major political units is the second most populous country in the world.

Within the sub-continent of which India stills forms the major part there is immense environmental contrast. Particularly in the drier areas, but also elsewhere, the main climatic characteristic is its unpredictability, causing continual problems of sheer survival for the majority of the population formed of rural subsistence communities. Alongside this massive and depressed rural sector is a substantial and dichotomous urban component in which are juxtaposed some of the most modern industries and high density traditional trading and religious centres. There is also a huge movement of urbanisation creating not only vast shanty zones but also multicultural complexes. Given the large territorial area, the overall population density of about 200 per square kilometre is fairly high, and in many areas rates of population increase are a cause for concern. With a per capita GNP of about $200 p.a. India is, on average, one of the poorest countries in the world.

In addition to discussions in Delhi, the field visits were limited to the States of Gujarat and Orissa and locations in and around Baroda and Bhubaneswar in particular.

The State of Gujarat on the western side of India is predominantly agricultural, though with a very significant history of trading, and associated urban centres. With a population of between 30-40 million, the State is demographically larger than most countries. Gujarati is the main language, with Hindi also official, but in the major centres such as Baroda English is widely used in the professional, industrial and commercial communities. Baroda, on the main route between Delhi and Bombay, is the centre of a former 'princely state', in which formal education has a strong tradition. However urban/rural dichotomy is stark, with modern microelectronic industries on the one hand and the most basic subsistence agriculture on the other, on which the majority depend for survival.

By contrast, the State of Orissa on the eastern side of the country is relatively moist, though considerably poorer than Gujarat in overall terms. Also with a population of over 30 million, Orissa is predominantly agricultural. On the interior hills are some of main concentrations of tribal peoples, some of whom are shifting cultivators. They have been pushed further inland by the extension of the more developed rural economies of the plains people and the industrial and commercial activities in the maritime zone. The predominant and official language is Oriya, with English recognised above Hindi as the second State language, which is against federal policy and has educational implications.

Although there are significant mineral deposits in Orissa, and some related secondary industries, the trading sector is not so well developed as Gujarat and the overall economic profile of the state poorer as a result. Bhubaneswar is a relatively modern and planned capital.

b. Education

The system of education in India is illustrated in the diagram below (Cowen and McLean 1984 p 154). The pupils surveyed were in the first year of the Upper Primary cycle.

The following statistics for five states/union territories attempt to demonstrate female participation in education in Gujarat and Orissa in relation to that in other parts of India. Delhi has been selected because of the idiosyncrasy of capital cities, Kerala because of its high participation rate and Rajasthan because female enrolment is lower there than anywhere else in India. The various tables illustrate girls' enrolment, overall dropout and numbers of female teachers in each region. (Source: NCERT. Fifth All-India Educational Survey selected statistics Delhi 1989).

EDUCATION SYSTEM OF INDIA BASED ON THE 10+2+3 SYSTEM

Table 1: Percentage of Girls' enrolment to Total Enrolment: 1986

	Classes I - V	Classes VI - VIII	Classes IX - X	Classes XI - XII
Gujarat	43.18	38.82	36.23	37.52
Kerala	48.79	49.12	49.63	43.00
Orissa	42.10	36.32	32.41	35.51
Rajasthan	28.02	19.75	16.82	16.42
Delhi	45.56	45.32	43.07	44.76

Table 2: Enrolment in Classes II - VIII as Percentage of Enrolment in Class 1 (Boys and Girls)

	Class 1	Class 2	Class 3	Class 4	Class 5	Class 6	Class 7	Class 8
Gujarat	100	73.04	69.48	57.35	50.61	41.29	34.82	30.03
Kerala	100	106.10	103.16	97.45	98.84	92.18	84.73	81.31
Orissa	100	80.15	74.60	56.48	47.10	35.15	31.01	27.92
Rajasthan	100	47.61	35.38	33.25	27.55	27.19	20.87	18.50
Delhi	100	92.58	83.10	77.51	70.51	79.56	72.00	64.37

Table 3: Percentage of Women Teachers

	Primary Stage	Upper Primary	Secondary	Higher Secondary
Gujarat	44.81	41.17	21.25	22.67
Kerala	61.20	57.34	60.51	45.69
Orissa	16.08	13.14	16.13	45.94
Rajasthan	23.07	22.99	19.37	18.98
Delhi	66.11	54.88	49.34	48.41

c. Primary Perceptions

Part of the survey was conducted in Primary 7 classes in Gujarati-medium schools in and around Baroda and the rest in Oriya-medium schools in and around Bhubaneswar in Orissa. There were 266 pupils involved, 166 boys and 100 girls, from a variety of backgrounds: urban and rural elite, urban and rural poor - children of industrial chemists and of road-sweepers, of grain merchants and of subsistence farmers. Ages ranged from 10-15 years but the majority were 12 or 13 years of age. Statistics show educational opportunities and enrolment to be a little better for girls in Gujarat than in Orissa and this was confirmed by our survey in the schools. Educational provision for girls is free in Gujarat from primary school to University and has been positively encouraged in Baroda for two generations.

The pupils in the survey were quite heavily involved in helping at home: the boys mainly fetching water, working in the fields and going to the market and the girls fetching water, preparing food and sweeping. Both looked after siblings. Rural girls were more likely to help with crops in Orissa than in Gujarat. They were less likely however to go to the market and this, together with the difficulty of getting access to talk to mothers in Orissa, seems symptomatic of the prevalence of more traditional attitudes. There was general agreement that girls help at home more than boys but urban boys seemed less willing to admit this.

Overall 53 per cent of the pupils surveyed said that they sometimes could not come to school because they had to do jobs for their parents, but the percentage was higher in the rural areas in both Gujarat and Orissa. The only statistically significant difference between boys and girls was in urban Gujarat where boys were more likely to miss school for this reason. The highest percentage was in a small market town in Gujarat where many of the boys helped in their fathers' shops.

When asked to agree or disagree with the statement "Girls need to go to school as much as boys", pupils in Gujarat agreed more strongly than any other group in the survey; in fact only 3 per cent disagreed. The numbers disagreeing in Orissa, especially rural Orissa, were higher. Urban girls in both regions were more likely than rural ones to reject the idea that girls leave school earlier than boys. Pupils in urban areas were also, as in Jamaica and Sierra Leone, more likely to regard distance to school as a problem. Transport and distance loom large as problems for city children while rural ones either have a school in their village, or seem to accept quite long walking distances to get to school as being a natural part of life.

The children's perceptions of their parents' literacy levels followed the expected patterns: the percentage of mothers "good at reading and writing" is consistently lower than that of fathers and the percentage for both parents is lower in the rural areas than in the towns.

As regards marriage, the numbers of children intending to marry is slightly below the survey average in Gujarat but average in Orissa. The striking result is in the numbers of children these pupils plan to have: with only one exception, pupils from both regions and from all types of locations are almost 100 per cent in favour of having between 0 and 2 daughters and 0-2 sons. Together with Bangladesh, the Indian sample has the lowest family size projections in the survey: pupils in Cameroon, Jamaica and Vanuatu envisage much larger families. The one exception in the Indian sample is in rural Orissa where traditional attitudes surface in the case of boy children: 87 per cent want 0-2 boys and 13 per cent would like 3-5 boys.

In general, career choices appear to be sex-stereotyped, and in the case of girls, rather limited. Gujarat produced the only pupils in the whole survey apart from two in Yaoundé who wanted to become artists or poets; they were all boys. Even so, female participation in education in Gujarat is obviously making progress. Of the 66 teachers in schools visited, only seven were men, even if the headteachers and bursars were male. One group of girls in a quiet, small market town can serve to illustrate how new attitudes are emerging: these girls had a wider range of career choices than the boys in the same class, more than half did not intend to marry or have children, a startling one third of them came to school on bicycles, and all came from families with no more than two or three children. They were nearly all daughters of oil, grain or cloth traders, clerks or teachers. It is not only the professionally and socially elite groups in the cities who are giving more opportunities to their daughters: a great deal is happening in Gujarat's small towns and villages too.

The answers below are those of a 12 year old girl living in a village. Her father is a clerk and her mother a stone-worker. She has two brothers. She helps at home everyday fetching water, preparing food, sweeping and shopping. She wants to be a teacher, to marry and to have one son and one daughter.

B. Factors

i. Geographical

There is immense geographical diversity, in both human and physical terms, even just within Gujarat and Orissa and the areas visited in and around Baroda and Bhubaneswar.

The rural/urban dichotomy is profound, ranging from sophisticated cities with high tech industries and substantial educational traditions to highly marginalised hill tribes with pre-industrial economies. There is a massive migration from rural to urban areas, creating increasingly complicated cultural mosaics with which schools are required to cope. The educational dimension of this relationship works in both directions (push/pull) and rapid change in rural areas arising from new lines of communication (roads for long distance commercial travel) can be both liberating and damaging in respect of the needs and causes of rural women and girls.

Issues of isolation, dispersal of population and locale specific cultural traits including innumerable vernaculars provide difficult contexts in which to try to focus on the particular educational needs of any given group of people. Relationship between the social groups, perhaps through education will produce new problems.

In general in the rural areas contacted the enrolment of girls was substantially less than that of boys, with an internal contrast between the relatively strong support of the local elite for their girls' schooling and the weak response of the underprivileged masses, whose daughters may not enrol until 8-10 years old and drop out within a year or two.

In any case the school systems are not universal, being provided by a variety of sponsors, including the Federal and State Governments, and a significant private sector. If the system is to become universal and effective, then more efficient location and operation of the individual units is essential, and the population base for the establishment of a primary school may need to be reduced (e.g. from 300 to 200). At present, distance between home and school can still be a deterrent to female participation, despite the national policy of attempts to provide schooling facilities within a radius of one kilometre of the country's rural habitations.

ii. Socio-Cultural

This is a very strong factor in the case of India, but in close harness with the economic. The marked urban/rural dichotomy already mentioned means that for more detailed discussion the populations would have to be disaggregated at least into: urban elites, urban mass, rural elites and rural mass. But then we would have further to recognise scheduled castes and tribes as well as the squatting urban poor of the shanties. Comments here must inevitably be rather general.

In most communities patriarchal forces still dominate. Females are subordinated unless they are in a matriarchal system (as in Kerala for example). Where formal schooling exists, female participation is repelled by a lack of female teachers. The issue of the security of daughters is very significant. With girls being home-based, some informants thought that the most useful educational skill they can acquire is letter reading and writing on behalf of their illiterate parents, and particularly their mothers. Subjection is the norm for most Indian women outside of the urban middle classes. This severely constrains the school attendance of girls after the onset of puberty. They are required to learn other skills of significance to their family and community and in respect of their marriageability, such as singing, dancing, cooking and the decoration of buildings. Formal education can be a severe disadvantage in this respect. For women and girls to break away from such restrictions, either the support of males would have to be gained and/or the women would have to acquire at least a measure of real economic independence. Neither is easily obtained in a situation of patriarchal poverty.

The average family size in the samples of pupils tapped in Gujarat and Orissa is smaller than Cameroon, Sierra Leone and Vanuatu, and the number of children these boys and girls hoped to have when they become parents was also relatively small, though the preference, especially of the boys was for male offspring. The high status attached to boys has the corollary of low status for girls, though in the scheduled tribes (e.g. Orissa), girls are considered more of an asset. Across the whole range of social groups mentioned above, the nature of female role models, and the contribution of trained and educated women to community interests are significant.

iii. Health

A factor surprisingly rarely mentioned by respondents, but self-evidently significant to the participation of girls and women in any form of educational exercise. Grinding poverty and sheer hard work are debilitating and can cause particular conditions of note, such as blindness. The high rate of female mortality has various causes but within it, infant and maternal mortality are both seriously high. Female infanticide persists, with increasingly sophisticated methods being used by the more affluent urban middle classes. There is a low valuation of female life at birth followed by neglect, early marriage and childbirth (with associated health risks), a long reproductive span and domestic overwork. Large families are seen as an insurance in rural regions, but fewer, better fed babies would be preferable. The opening up of new roads tends to bring additional health hazards, including sexually transmitted diseases. As one source put it: "Women's lives are cheaper and more expendable than men's. Their inferior status stands in the way of their survival."

iv. Economic

Poverty and hunger are the main reasons for the non-participation of girls in education. Food and survival are urgent daily issues. Boys do not attend either, usually working in the fields or going to market, but the girls' tasks often carry with them surrogate mother dimensions with all the responsibilities implied, because changing patterns of employment are forcing their mothers further afield. Pupils surveyed in the primary schools visited certainly had such tasks, especially the girls, but the ones who were probably doing most for their parents were not at school to answer our questions! Child labour is an endemic and basic aspect of the majority of poor rural economies in India.

There is a worsening position for the female work force; in both agriculture and industry women are being deprived of traditional work and income by technological development and mechanisation. Women lack the basic education to learn technical and vocational skills, which are in any case not widely available through the formal system. There is a strong belief in boys' formal education as an investment and lack of belief in non-formal education as an investment. Both are profoundly mistaken in the context of rural India.

Dowry costs can be crippling at family level. Due to the patrilocal system, the labour of daughters is lost on marriage, hence the dis-incentive to invest in their education (markedly different in matriarchal areas of course). Where formal schooling does exist the lack of correspondence between education and economy highlights the need for income generation for rural women. The only relevant form of education at this stage is whatever will achieve this. A sharp boost in functional literacy combined with appropriate technology is needed to improve existing systems.

Women desperately need independent income (a) for the family and (b) to cope with divorce and widowhood. To achieve this, upgraded or new skills acquired must be locale specific. Such skills are particularly important to drop-outs from the academic secondary sector. Formal education during years of physical growth can render both sexes physically unable to contribute to local economy in the traditional way (for example the inability to carry heavy loads - especially water - on the head, often a female task). The later the drop-out, the greater the problem.

v. Religious

This is not a strong factor in itself and respondents rarely mentioned it. Both indigenous and imported varieties are evident. In respect of the former, both Gujarat and Orissa are Hindu areas where women traditionally have low status and are under obligation to marry and produce male children. The religious significance of sons in terms of obligations to parents can be important, though in practice some elderly people are now also seeing their daughters in this role - mainly a middle class variant due to the mobility of professional sons.

Islam is often maligned in respect of this topic, but in fact its teachings are sometimes misinterpreted in order to try to legitimise religiously the relative male:female status. The Koran does not forbid the education of girls.

Christianity has largely been a beneficial influence in India in terms of improving female status and access to education. The cases of Kerala and Assam illustrate this, where the political factor is also supportive. Teachers are attracted to denominational schools because they receive regular and reliable pay.

The role of local elders, which can have religious dimensions, in supporting increased female participation, can be vital to any development scheme.

vi. Legal

India has a good and relatively long standing record of labour laws against misuse, but these are constantly flouted by employers. Rural workers rarely complain as a paid job of any sort is a valuable asset. In any case, such laws do not relate to the informal/family based economic unit and women are constrained by other laws. They have no rights to inherit property, indeed they are property, as shown in the marriage customs. Rural and poor urban women are not in a position to claim legal rights due to lack of education (basic literacy), lack of legal knowledge and their traditional dependence on males.

Important in this respect would be the acquisition of letter writing, simple accounting and contractual skills by (rural) women, as also in such aspects as hire purchase and marriage laws. Literacy programmes therefore need to be relevant to such special needs of women and girls.

vii. Political/Administrative

The political dimension is complex here. Modern India comprises 32 major units, unified only against outsiders. All three levels of public political life, Federal, State and local, affect this issue and there are also other interested political forces (such as teachers' unions which are against locale specific operations of any kind).

Political will in respect of resolving the problem of female participation in schooling is weak, and especially so at local level, where the quality and reliability of local (male) officials is very poor and in need of reform. Rural elites are still a strong force, usually for conservatism. Decisions as to positive discrimination in favour of women can be counter-productive, but the lesser of two evils may be better than nothing.

Even where village schools exist, they tend to be appropriated for community and family functions though this may not be as dysfunctional as heads and teachers feel it is, provided additional funding accrues from such uses, which it usually does not. Formal education is clearly a subordinate element in many of the rural communities of rural India.

viii. Educational

There are many systems of provision, often overlapping or interconnecting, but in general the system is incomplete and inadequate and fails to get anywhere near the educational needs of the majority of females. This may have its benefits in the long term, providing that future developments in provision are relevant. Some sort of nursery provision is essential in order to free mothers for economically productive (income generating) work. The very low level, even incidence, of (adult) female literacy is a strong brake on development and perhaps priority should be given to initiatives combining pre-school and adult education, with provision of formal schooling coming later in association with changing economic needs in respect of education in each locality.

As far as the formal system at school level is concerned it is incomplete, poorly resourced and administered. An enormous upgrading of political will is required to direct more public funds to formal education, for devolved funds dissipate due to maladministration in the face of the complexity and scale of the problem. As it stands, formal schooling is of little relevance in the rural communities, but an essential element of urban economies, for in the case of India (to a greater extent than most of the other cases) there is also a very sophisticated urban-based economy which can absorb both male and female products of the system. As in Bangladesh middle class girls are achieving very highly and moving strongly into areas previously the preserve of males, such as engineering. But the systems of the Indian states also vary greatly in terms of female participation according to historical influences, matriarchal systems and political will. Where these come together, as in Kerala, the education participation of women and girls is outstanding. By contrast in the relatively high tribal component of the population of Orissa, the female proportion of the respective age-group participating in primary, 'middle' and secondary education is 16, 9 and 4 per cent respectively. Both State and Federal systems remain inflexible in the face of locale specific educational needs.

So in respect of girls there is low access, insufficient places and a dearth of female teachers in some rural areas. The last is particularly significant as the security of girls is vital in the face of possible assault not only en route to school, but also sometimes at the hands of male teachers. Female teachers would also be at risk in rural locations and in any case there is no accommodation for them in the villages. The majority of qualified female teachers are from urban areas and are married to husbands who work in such areas.

Girls start late and drop out quickly, even more so in the tribal communities where the whole situation of an enclosed space for (abstract) education to be imparted is profoundly alien to their own environmental imperatives and informal educational practices which serve them well unless they wish to join the modern sector, or indeed cannot avoid it reaching them. Going to formal school can disadvantage tribal children in respect of their own community.

There are efforts in the formal system to deal with gender bias in texts and this is helpful. But even in the advanced urban areas, the fact that the education of girls can lead to independence of thought and increased aspirations does not necessarily appeal to middle class males, nor to mothers-in-law who are still key figures in family organisation. Nonetheless urban middle class girls are excelling in the universities, including the male 'preserves', such as engineering, but will they help their rural sisters?

ix. Initiatives

Numerous initiatives are being taken that relate in various ways to the issue of female participation in education and only a selection will be mentioned here, for example:

· The Integrated Child Development Scheme
(ICDS) for the age-range 3-6, operating three hours per day under the auspices of the Ministry of Welfare;

· Operation Blackboard another Federal initiative attempting inter-alia to solve the problem of lack of female teachers (and therefore of female enrolment) in rural areas;

· The new DIETS (over 400) for the support of 'pre-service' INSET:

· The SCERT Early Childhood Centres scheme;

· The Indira Ghandi Open University outreach programme.

Massive initiatives carry immense problems of their own in such areas as funding, logistics, counterparts and constructing. Perhaps the most impressive initiatives, and more likely to succeed, are smaller scale efforts on the part of individual institutions, with the likelihood of long term commitment such as the MS University of Baroda Home Science Extension Programme.

C. Recommendations

Our major recommendations (not necessarily in order of priority) would be:

i. that in situations of poverty and malnutrition, feeding schemes for primary and secondary pupils be considered for support;

ii. that schemes be funded to revise text-books and develop new ones that would help to raise consciousness at school level as to the problem of lack of female representation and the possibilities for improving the situation;

iii. that encouragement should be given to efficient NGOs to promote schemes to effect the progression of girls from primary to secondary school;

iv. that consideration be given to funding a pilot scheme of new single-sex secondary schools for girls with safe hostel facilities for both pupils and female teachers;

v. that initiatives be encouraged to develop technical and vocational education, for both sexes especially, but not exclusively, as a 'second chance' for drop-outs from formal schooling;

vi. that India be assisted in the reviewing and expansion of teacher education and training provision in such a way as to encourage greater female participation, including more residential facilities and with special consideration for the primary sector;

vii. that the particular problem of the security of (rural) females be addressed, especially the provision of accommodation for female teachers.

viii. that projects be developed to improve the standard of local administration of educational provision and that the opportunity be taken to train a significant number of women in this work;

ix. that where work patterns cut across school hours, parents and the local community be involved in deciding on school hours and terms, (as per BRAC schools in Bangladesh). Adjustment should be made to the imperatives of the local economy;

x. that support be considered for rationalising the provision of schooling in large urban areas, such as Baroda and Bhubaneswar, where rapid urbanisation may be adding to already complex patterns of demand;

xi. that projects be developed and supported that address pre-school/child care needs and adult literacy needs in harness;

xii. that agencies such as ODA continue, and if possible increase, their support of development schemes targeted on rural women and operated by NGOs, and in particular to do with income generation, non-formal education and basic legal knowledge;

xiii. that incentives be increased such as: abolition of fees, provision of uniforms, free books and meals, scholarships and 'dowry-bribes' (so that schooling can be completed before marriage);

xiv. that initiatives be coordinated with health, sanitation, water, income generating and other projects so that education is part of a coordinated package;

xv. that further assistance be considered for improving the standards of traditional agricultural practice, especially where this will enhance the experience, status and income of females;

xvi. that credible women's movements, with track records of support for women and girls in need, be identified and considered for aid;

xvii. that efforts be made to raise the level of male awareness of the community and family economic benefits likely to arise from increased participation of women and girls in certain forms of educational and income generating activity.