I knew I would learn so much from working on the farm and traveling throughout the village (and I did!), but I never in a million years thought I would learn so much from teaching in the school. It was a new experience for me, and one that proved to be amazing. To give you an idea of what I was working with: of every hundred children (of school-going age) in India, around seventy enroll in Class I. Half of these drop out before they complete the primary level; less than ten of the remaining thirty-five make it into Class VIII, and fewer than five finish high-school. So, as an NGO, "Eklavaya," puts it, that says that of the massive school system in India, it boasts only a five percent efficiency. (For the lower-and lowest- castes, these numbers are much, much lower.) This is not to say that many Indians do not finish school and attend University, they do. India produces many of the worlds best engineers and doctors (and IT technicians!), but in terms of their massive population, the percent is still low in comparison. In terms of teaching, more than sixty percent of primary schools in India only have one teacher (or at best two) to take care of all five classes, and there are over 2,628 primary schools with simply no teachers at all. Along the lines of my research: of 5.29 lakh primary schools, over half of them have no drinking water facilities, and eighty-five percent, no toilets. Learning all of this certainly made me want to stay longer, to help in some way, somehow, to keep these kids in school. I learned that in many rural villages like the one I was in, literacy is replacing education. The government is passionate about increasing literacy, especially among girls, and has created numerous programs to aid in doing so. However, in many of these rural programs they are peddling literacy as a substitute for education, teaching them to simply read, and sending them on their way. As P. Sainath puts it in an article in The Times of India, (from where much of these statistics came from) "Literacy is a vital social tool. It is not an education..." It is probably true that there is no literate population that is poor, and no illiterate population that is other than poor, but that still does not eliminate the need for a well-rounded education. This experience changed me in a way I never imagined, causing me to look deeper into the roots of education and consequently social change, economics and development. I can only hope that in some small way, I have made as much of a difference to at least one of these children as they made to me.
So, I am back in Jaipur now, and preparing for my flight to Mumbai tomorrow to meet Jori (she goes to Hamilton College; we went abroad together last semester and she is back in Mumbai for a month researching Bollywood films). I imagine being in the enormous city will be quite different than where I have been! We will spend two days in Mumbai and then fly on to the South, where I will continue my research in a much more arid region. I have been praying to the rain god to keep his showers moderate over the next few weeks, as the South is known for much, much heavier monsoon seasons. Maybe he can come visit Rajasthan for a bit and give some rain to them! I can only imagine us trudging through knee-deep puddles in the streets of Kerala-what a change in scenery from the dust storms in the desert!
While moving on (from my village family and my family in Jaipur) will be and has been sad and difficult, I am excited to embark on a new journey, venturing into the unknown, as they say, and experiencing all that the South of India has to offer!
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