Rajasthan’s Empty Desks: What Pandemic Travel Revealed About Girls’ Education
The roads into Rajasthan’s villages during the pandemic felt different. Usually buzzing with the vibrant chaos of daily life, a quieter, more apprehensive energy hung in the air. My journey, driven by a need to understand grassroots realities, led me past vast stretches of arid land and into communities where resilience is woven into the very fabric of existence. But beneath the colourful saris and the stoic faces, a quieter crisis was unfolding – one where young girls were disappearing from classrooms, their futures hanging in the balance. What I witnessed wasn’t just school closures; it was the unravelling of hard-won gains for girls’ education.
Before the pandemic hit, Rajasthan, like many parts of India, had been making strides in getting girls into schools. Schemes like free uniforms, bicycles, and mid-day meals acted as powerful incentives, chipping away at traditional barriers. Classrooms weren’t full, but the trend was upward. COVID-19 slammed that progress into reverse. When schools physically shut their doors, the digital divide became a chasm, especially for girls in these remote villages.
Walking through narrow village lanes, the absence of children playing during school hours was stark. Talking to families, the picture became painfully clear. “Online classes?” one father near Ajmer chuckled grimly, gesturing towards his basic mobile phone. “This is for calls. Maybe messages. How can my daughter study on this? And even if we had a smartphone, the network here is a ghost.”
The Burden of Invisibility:
The closure of schools didn’t just pause education; it drastically increased the domestic workload for girls. With parents often forced into precarious daily wage labour or struggling with illness, girls became the default caregivers and household managers.
Childcare: Younger siblings, no longer in Anganwadi centres (government childcare centres), became the responsibility of older sisters. I met 13-year-old Priya near Udaipur, her toddler brother clinging to her hip. “I used to love maths,” she whispered, her eyes downcast. “Now… I feed him, clean, help Maa. When will school open? I forget things already.” Her textbooks lay untouched in a corner, gathering dust.
Household Chores: Fetching water from distant sources, cooking, cleaning – tasks amplified by everyone being home all day – consumed hours that were once spent learning. Education became a luxury many families couldn’t afford in the immediate struggle for survival.
Economic Pressure: With family incomes plummeting, the perceived “opportunity cost” of sending a girl to school, even when they reopened sporadically, rose sharply. Girls were pushed into contributing – helping in fields, working as domestic help in nearby towns, or assisting with small family trades. “She can earn a little now,” explained a mother near Jodhpur about her 15-year-old daughter, who had been a bright student. “Books won’t fill our stomachs today.”
The Shadow of Tradition:
The pandemic didn’t create societal pressures; it amplified them. Extended school closures provided fertile ground for deeply rooted issues to resurface with greater force:
Child Marriage: Alarmingly, I heard whispers, and sometimes more open talk, of marriages being arranged for girls who were suddenly “idle” at home. Community workers confirmed a disturbing rise. Fearful of “stigma” or seeing marriage as financial security in uncertain times, some families saw this as a solution. A local activist near Bikaner shared, “We intervened in three cases last month alone. The parents said, ‘What else is she to do? School is closed, maybe forever for her.'”
Safety Concerns: With girls spending more time at home or working locally, anxieties about safety sometimes paradoxically kept them confined and away from potential community learning initiatives or reopened schools perceived as too far or unsafe to travel to.
Shifting Priorities: For some families, especially where girls were nearing adolescence, the prolonged absence from formal education cemented the belief that further schooling was unnecessary. Skills for managing a household were deemed more immediately relevant than algebra or history.
Beyond Lockdowns: The Struggle to Return
Even as restrictions eased and schools tentatively reopened, the return was far from universal, especially for adolescent girls. Barriers remained formidable:
1. Learning Loss & Confidence: Months, sometimes years, of missed learning left girls feeling far behind. The fear of being unable to catch up, of facing ridicule, became a significant psychological barrier. “I don’t remember much,” confessed 14-year-old Sunita near Jaipur. “The teacher speaks fast now. I feel… stupid.”
2. Household Entrenchment: The roles girls had assumed during the closures – primary caregivers, essential workers – were hard to relinquish. Families had adapted to their labour; letting them return to school meant reconfiguring the household dynamic again.
3. Infrastructure Gaps: Many reopened schools lacked basic water and sanitation facilities. For girls managing menstruation, inadequate or non-existent toilets were a major deterrent to regular attendance. This fundamental issue, long-standing but highlighted brutally by the pandemic’s hygiene focus, remained unaddressed in countless locations.
4. Teacher Shortages & Motivation: Overburdened teachers, dealing with their own pandemic trauma and now multi-grade classrooms filled with students at vastly different levels, struggled to provide the targeted support girls needed to reintegrate.
Glimmers of Hope and the Path Forward:
Despite the bleakness, rays of resilience shone through. I encountered incredible individuals and local organisations working tirelessly:
Community Champions: Motivated local women, often past students themselves, were conducting small-scale tuition or bridge courses under trees or in courtyards, helping girls revise basics and rebuild confidence. Their dedication was humbling.
NGO Interventions: Groups were actively tracking dropouts, counselling families, providing learning materials, and even negotiating with parents to delay marriages. They facilitated small group sessions focusing on foundational skills and psychosocial support.
Government Initiatives (Slowly Trickling Down): Efforts to identify and enrol out-of-school children were underway, and schemes like conditional cash transfers specifically targeting girls’ retention were being reactivated, though their reach was inconsistent.
What Needs to Happen:
Travelling through Rajasthan’s villages underscored that getting girls back into school isn’t just about reopening buildings. It demands a multi-pronged, urgent, and empathetic approach:
1. Aggressive Re-enrollment Drives: Proactive, door-to-door campaigns focused specifically on adolescent girls, addressing parental concerns directly (safety, economic support, value of education).
2. Accelerated Learning Programs: Intensive bridge courses designed to help girls recover lost learning quickly and effectively, rebuilding their academic confidence and preparing them for their appropriate grade level.
3. Cash Incentives with Strings Attached: Strengthening and ensuring timely delivery of financial incentives explicitly tied to girls’ continued regular attendance and progression, helping offset immediate economic pressures on families.
4. Investing in Infrastructure: Prioritizing the construction and maintenance of separate, functional toilets with water and sanitation facilities in every school. This is non-negotiable for girls’ dignity and attendance.
5. Community Engagement: Partnering deeply with local leaders, women’s groups, and youth to challenge harmful norms around child marriage and shift perceptions about girls’ education being a valuable long-term investment for the entire community.
6. Teacher Training & Support: Equipping teachers with the skills and resources to manage multi-level classrooms and provide the extra, compassionate support girls returning after long absences desperately need.
7. Leveraging Technology Wisely: While not a panacea, exploring sustainable solutions for low-tech or offline digital learning resources that can supplement in-person teaching and provide flexibility where needed.
The silence in those village lanes wasn’t just the quiet of lockdowns; it was the sound of potential being stifled. The girls I met, carrying water, tending siblings, or gazing wistfully at old school bags, held dreams that the pandemic threatened to extinguish. Rajasthan’s vibrant spirit is undeniable, but its future depends heavily on ensuring its daughters aren’t left standing at an empty classroom door. Bringing them back demands more than just policy – it requires unwavering commitment, community action, and the recognition that their education is the bedrock of progress, pandemic or not. The empty desks tell a story; it’s time we rewrite the ending.
(Names marked with have been changed to protect privacy.)
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