Sreelatha Menon: Wheels required here

EAR TO THE GROUND

The Finance Minister has offered monthly scholarships to check dropout rates. But, how about ensuring that the children have transport to reach their schools, first?

Imagine going to school in a tractor. Or taking a pregnant woman to the district hospital in a rickety tractor.

If you have to reach a village in Barnahal block in Mainpuri district of Uttar Pradesh, the farm machine on wheels, unfortunately, is the most available mode of transport.

Even these come packed. The other option would be sitting on the back seat of a village lad's cycle.

The lad would otherwise be grazing cattle or assisting his father in ploughing the land, both taking turns to function like a cart pulled on by the bullocks.

The rich yield of potatoes, that later fill their mud mansion, makes it worth the trouble. What if the lad never went to school after class 8. Even if he went, his sister will most certainly quit after class 8. It's the same in village after village. The reason, they say, is the difficulty to reach the school which would be usually a few kilometres away.

If there are 27 primary schools in Barnahal block, there are eight secondary schools; two are for girls. Again, the tractor wins.

And so this tract of Brajbhumi, where the speech of every man seems as delectable to the ears as poetry, children have to bid adieu to schooling at the age of 13.

For girls it is marriage and child bearing. For boys, it is toiling in the mustard or potato fields.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram has offered monthly scholarships of Rs 6,000 a year to one lakh children who prove, through a national test, that they want to study after Class VIII. This, he hopes, would reduce the drop out rate at class 8.

Maybe he should also take some tips from his poet and politician compatriot M Karunanidhi, the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.

Karunanidhi recently distributed cycles to every child who was going to a secondary school.

Karunanidhi like his predecessor MGR certainly knows what moves or stops the people of his state.

MGR gave the children food to eat, and now Karunanidhi has given them cycles.

If Chidambaram were to visit the interiors of Orissa for instance, and tour a village, he would see that the cut-off period for children to drop out of schools comes down even lower, at Class V.

In Pratapur village in Lanjigarh block of Kalahandi district, an anganwadi is the only government establishment. apart from a two-room primary school.

The anganwadi is full of girls right up to the age of 15 and 16, training to take care of children below the age of six who attend the centre. All of them dropped out at Class V.

Going to a secondary school would mean travelling five or six kilometres. Boys went, they stayed on. These are all tribal children.

It is the same story everywhere in rural Orissa. Will the next Budget have scholarships for Class VI also?

It's no guarantee that girls from Pratapur will travel to a private school in the block. For there is no transport.

If the Finance Minister were to visit the place when there is a taxi strike, he would have no means of travel but on his feet.

The state transport does not operate in villages. Only two per cent of buses run by Orissa State Transport are government vehicles. The rest are private buses. State Transport Commissioner Satish Agnihotri, who was the former Social Welfare Secretary, says he knows the implications. It means zero results for all the brilliant welfare measures he initiated in the State 10 years ago. With no buses running in the countryside, schools, hospitals, anganwadis, everything is beyond reach.

So Karunanidhi unlike Naveen Patnaik or Mulayam Singh Yadav, gave away not only cycles; he also runs buses.

The Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation runs 17,000 and 5,000-odd private buses.

So running a bus or at least a school bus in the village would bring in more children than giving selective scholarships. Unfortunately, Sarva Siksha Abhiyan does not talk about school buses.