Soon there would be more girls in government schools than boys...

In the class that I teach there is this girl, Rupa, who is extremely good. She does all the work assigned to her, is very earnest, pays full attention and is eager to learn. She is very bright too and picks up things very fast. I found that she knew more English than I have already taught and she can almost read all words and even sentences. I was curious as to how she knows so much so I asked her after the class yesterday. She said her elder brother taught her. Her brother does not come to this school, he goes to a private school in that area. She has a younger brother too and he too goes to a private school. Her elder brother seems to know a reasonable amount of English and so I asked her why she did not go to the private school too. She said her parents did not want to spend money for her and so she is sent to the government school which free. She had an expression, “duh isn’t it obvious?” on her face. Gender discrimination, stark and unabashed! Her parents feel it is worthwhile making their sons better educated and not their daughter. Do they think that the sons would look after them while the daughter would be married off and even if she earns her earnings would go to the family of the guy whom she is married to? The whole way our Indian system of marriage and family works against adequate investments made for women. The irony of this whole thing is that in the end the boys never take care of their parents or their families anyway. Especially in the poor sections of the society they mostly end up being alcoholics and are a drain on the family.

The extreme form of this gender discrimination is the selective sex determined termination of pregnancy which seems to be quite prevalent in India. India has a very adverse gender ratio (see Missing women of India). May be it is better to kill them off rather than giving them second class treatment all through their lives.

I am determined to teach Rupa at least as much as her brothers learn, if not more.