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Uttar Pradesh, INDIA--The whirr of old fashioned sewing machines reverberates in the high-ceilinged room. Forty girls dressed in uniform green and yellow salwar kameez bend their heads towards their stitching as shafts of afternoon sunlight warm their identical hairstyles of black looped braids.
In India this scene easily evokes the word sweatshop, and rightly so. Twenty five percent of India’s population lives below the poverty line (defined for rural areas at $8 a month--or enough to buy exactly 2200 calories per day), and impoverished girls and young women are an easily exploited demographic. But here in Anoopshahr Sub-district in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh (UP), these students at Pardada Pardadi Girl’s Vocational School are not sewing for someone else’s profit, but for their own futures.
While India is currently the second fastest growing economy in the world, it is also home to the world’s largest population of poor people, half of whom are concentrated in three rural states, including UP. In a country where two thirds of the population works in agriculture, mostly as subsistence farmers, stories of technology millionaires seem light years away, and the hope that the recent success of an emerging urban middle class will trickle down is too distant a promise for most rural Indians.
“Everyone in the world is talking about how India is shining,” says Sam Singh, a local man who made his fortune in the United States, and returned five years ago to found the school, “and it’s true, but only for about twenty percent. You have to ask how these twenty percent can fly with the other eighty percent hanging off of them.”
Pardada Pardadi’s model emphasizes a belief that while academics are crucial to lifting rural India out of poverty, education must be realistic in its goals and teach relevant skills. Here girls spend the first half of the day studying standardized Indian curriculum. In the second half they learn vocational skills, producing traditional handicrafts and textiles.
These skills will not only provide these young women with an independent source of income throughout their lives, but also function to sustain the school. The work produced by students is marketed towards India’s upper classes, and the hope is that in a few years every aspect of the school will be funded by the profits. Former or current students will also eventually fill all of the school’s teaching and administrative roles.
Sustainability and self-reliance are key goals of Pardada Pardadi and of particular importance to a rural Indian society where tuition money is scarce, government aid is unreliable, and education for girls is not a priority. For every day a girl attends school, ten rupees are deposited into a bank account created for her so that by graduation, if her attendance is regular, she can expect to have earned approximately 100,000 rupees (U.S. $2,200). After two years of attendance at the school, a student also earns a bicycle so she can be responsible for her own transportation.
The value of self-reliance even extends to the everyday upkeep of the school, as girls clean and maintain the facilities and cook and serve meals themselves. This sharing of duties also helps break down caste, another cultural element hindering economic development in traditional Indian society.
By graduation students have something unheard of for women in the region: their own savings, a means of transport, and skills that can earn them income. But Singh hopes they will also have acquired a sense of civic duty. This year marks the first graduating class and the goal is that some of these girls will go on to found schools using a similar model in other parts of rural India, while others will start small businesses in their communities. “This is not about exporting talent to the cities,” says Singh, “this is about trying to create the beginnings of a modern economy here.”
Three hundred miles away, in the desert state of Rajasthan, a different but equally innovative school is also teaching rural children the values of self-reliance, and showing that truly sustainable development can happen from the bottom up.
As in UP, the education of children here is often neglected in the face of the immediate demand for labor on family farms. In response, Barefoot College, an Indian-run NGO fighting rural poverty, created a network of progressive schools held at night so that students can continue working during the day.
While regular education and vocational training are also part of Barefoot College’s night schools, the Children’s Parliament is perhaps their most unique program. Founded 13 years ago to teach children about government, the Children’s Parliament is made up of student delegates, elected by the student body, who come together to discuss issues facing their schools and communities.
Before long The Children’s Parliament had taken over full responsibility for administration of the night schools, hiring and firing teachers, organizing infrastructure—such as the solar energy that powers the schools—and developing curriculum. Their power has grown beyond just running their own schools and now these kids, aged 6-14, are a respected voice in local politics, often petitioning government for village development projects in a poor rural area that is underrepresented in the country's political system.
"We should have the right to education, the right to play, the right to health, the right to make mistakes and the right to make our own decisions," says Santosh, 14, the current PM and the youngest of nine children who spend their days tending the family’s herd of water buffalo.
This autonomous spirit is emblematic of the kind of social development that is happening in parts of rural India. Instead of imitating urban and western models for development, or waiting for the proverbial rising tide, rural Indians are finding their own solutions to the unique issues their communities face. As a result they often have a more progressive approach than you might find in the middle class homes of New Delhi or Bangalore.
“What rural India brings to the economic table is eight hundred million sets of hands,” says Singh, his urbane manner and smart western dress in stark contrast with the sputtering tractors and bullock carts lumbering by behind him.
But whether exemplified in the belief that children should play a central role in community government, or in the enthusiasm of a generation of girls to participate in and spread new educational models, rural India’s most valuable asset may prove to be its eight hundred million minds.
Photos by Alex Stonehill. ©Copyright 2006 The Common Language Project All Rights Reserved
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