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This is one village that even Google maps miss out in their vast network. Mirzapur village in Kishangarh Bas block in Rajasthan's Alwar district, though just a dot among thousands like it across the state, is now witness to a small, but significant social movement of literacy.A large part of the movement must be credited to the Shiksha Panchayats, which staunchly believe in the concept of community-managed government schools. Each village has a group of 10-12 community members who constitute a Shiksha Panchayat. The Panchayat keeps a close eye on the performance and regularity of the government teacher, as well as the students. As many as 50 villages in the region already have Shiksha Panchayats. Each Shiksha Panchayat sends its representatives to a Panchayat at the cluster level, comprising a group of 10 villages. The next tier at the block level has 38 members in all. "We meet on a regular basis and discuss the problems we face in the daily running of our schools. Coming together also gives us the strength to approach the government authorities with our issues," says Sirajuddin, a Shiksha Panchayat member of Mirzapur. Last year, people from 50 villages came together and rallied to Kishangarh Bas with their demands. Even the government school teachers accompanied them. The community pressure yielded at least some result to cheer about—just this week the Mirzapur upper primary school was grantedpermission for the secondary level.Sirajuddin is literate, but not all the members of the panchayat are. He is aware that the Right to Education has come into force just about a month ago and is convinced that only education can bring about a change. "Not too long ago, nobody wanted to take brides or seek grooms from this village and we had to pay heavy dowry to marry off our daughters. Now we refuse to give dowry and tell them that our daughters are educated," he says pointing at graffiti on the school wall, which reads "School hamare aap ka, nahi kisike baap ka. Shiksha hamare aap ki. Nahi kisi ke baap ki.(Education is our right. No one can deprive us of it). The Shiksha Panchayat also decides how the grants received should be spent. For instance, a grant for 200 uniforms from NGO Room to Read was decided to be supplemented by the entire village so that uniforms could be provided to all 398 girl students.Till about five years back, Mirzapur presented a completely different picture. A government school was set up in the village in 1971, but no girl student had enrolled in it till 2005. Moreover, there were only 17 boys in the school. However, things started changing in 2005. Persuasion by Alwar Mewat Institute of Education and Development (AMIED) and initiatives of NGOs resulted in a wave of awareness among the villagers. By 2006, the enrollment in the upper primary Mirzapur government school increased to 168 boys and 129 girls, a total of 297 students. Since then, there has been no looking back. The total enrollment in the last academic year jumped to 582 students, including 278 girls.Manju Chowdhury was one of the first co-coordinators of AMIED to have approached the Meos in Mirzapur to convince them to send their girls to school. Doors were shut on her face and her requests ignored point-blank, saying "hamari ladkiyan beadab ho jayengi. Unka deen kharab ho jayega."A demographic profile of the region provides a clue to this behaviour. Meos are descendants of the Rajput community who converted to Islam. The community is largely impoverished. One reason, according to anthropologists, was the lack of irrigation that prevented them from growing more than one crop in a year. Secondly, they were also exploited by local moneylenders.While the literacy rate in Alwar district is an impressive 61.74%, inMirzapur, the rate is an appalling 13%.Particularly low female literacy rates mark this backward region. "The last Census data was shocking. Though the female literacy rate in Kishangarh Bas was 47%, in some of its villages the level was even lower. In Mirzapur it was just 6%, in Sarpur 0% and in Thoss 2%. It was villages such as Chikani and Bahadurpur that fared about 90% and improved the overall average," says Noor Mohammad, member secretary, AMIED."To begin with, they were apprehensive about a Hindu teaching their girls," says Manju. To earn their trust she had to keep her head covered all the time and talk in a very soft voice. And not laugh! Slowly, but surely perceptions changed and the fear that a regular school may undermine their identity or attempt to convert them abated."Muslim women in Mirzapur don't go to the mosque, but I went there and read nazams on the microphone. For a Hindu girl to read their nazams meant a lot to them, and they started treating us like their own daughters," says Manju. Around the same time, in 2006, international NGO Room to Read stepped in to conduct bridge courses for girls in the six to 14 age group, with a focus on mainstreaming them into regular schools.Sultan, an inhabitant of the Mirzapur village doesn't deny the patriarchal prejudices of his community. "Meo ki ladki ka school jaana buri baat mana jata tha (It was considered wrong for a daughter of a Meo to go to school)," he says.But this is no longer true today. In fact, the village is proud of 15-year-old Rajbala, the first girl in the surrounding eight villages, covering a population of 8,000, to complete eighth grade last year. Her accomplishment was so unexpected that it made headlines in the local press, and was considered a feat no less than Kalpana Chawla's flight to space. But it had the desired butterfly effect: this year 21 girls have achieved the same feat. Now accompanied by her brother, Rajbala cycles eight km each day to nearby village, Baghoda, to attend classes for the ninth grade. On days her brother skips school, she also has to stay back as she isn't allowed to trudge that distance alone. But before setting out for school, she must, like any other girl in her village, assist her mother in household chores and even in the fields. While on one hand she is happy to get the opportunity to study further, on the other, she is worried about finishing her syllabus. "There are no teachers...the courses for none of the subjects are complete yet," she says. Ask Rajbala what she aspires to be and she coyly replies 'teacher'.The bigger challenge here is to retain the students in school. Government data for Kishangarh Bas reveals despite a 99.6% enrollment in the first grade, only 22.2% students in the minority groups, including Gujjars and Meos, reached the eighth grade. The corresponding figures for the total students on the other hand stood at 93% in grade one and 57.4% for the eighth grade. While the community awareness has helped to some extent, there are other problems at hand. "A lot of students drop out after class six because they had no option to choose Urdu as one of the languages. There are 29 posts for Urdu teachers in Alwar, 26 of which are vacant. The pupil-teacher ratio is also a concern. There are 28 schools in the entire district that have just one teacher for every 100 students and 25 of them are in Mewat," Mohammad says.For instance, the middle school in Allapur Jat village has just one teacher. Vijay Kachera assembles all the 54 students in his school in one classroom—some children in the first grade and some in the eighth—and somehow manages to teach them all besides overseeing the mid-day meal programme. Two years ago there were 150 students in the school and two teachers. Last year the other teacher got transferred and the dropout rate shot up. "Parents are withdrawing their children from the school because there are no teachers. Some of them put them in schools in neighbouring Shekhpur and Berla villages," says Kachera. The appointment of the teachers, he adds, has been delayed because of the Gujjar reservation issue. The matter is sub-judice and little progress is in sight.Faultlines here criss-cross. Reportedly, 11 residential schools for girls were constructed in the region in 2007-08, costing Rs 25 lakh each, but none is functional yet. What intrigues Mohammad even more is the fact that the Mewat Vikas Board is unable to exhaust its budget for the area. Just 47.19% of the budget was spent in 2004-05; 50% in 2005-06, and just 30% for 2009-10.Meanwhile, the movement to educate daughters has spread to the vicinity as well. When 20-year-old Sangeeta got married into Sarpur village, "she had never thought her in-laws would allow her to study". But, they did. And even with an infant in her arms, she not just managed to attend classes, but also pass eighth grade. Sarpur, the last village in Kishangarh Bas, just a couple of km ahead of Mirzapur,still has no electricity and no pucca roads. "In 2001, our village was chosen as a model village under the Gandhi Gram programme. Who'd believe that? The electricity poles were dug in two years ago, but the power connection is not yet in place," says Bhatti, a resident of Sarpur, and also a member of the Shiksha Panchayat. He is however sure things will change soon.
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