Watching Children Walking To School

Niranjan Rajadhyaksha — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 04:17:00 GMT

To get to Goa, you have to turn off the NH4 and drive east towards the Western Ghats.

This is a completely different topography and economy. The roads are terrible. The villages on this route are far poorer than the ones we left behind as well as the ones we are driving towards --- they are neither in the prosperous sugar belt around Kolhapur nor in the tourist havens of Goa.

But I could not miss the children going to school that morning.

There are several informal ways to judge the level of development in an area you are driving through --- telecom coverage, the merchandise in the roadside stalls, the quality of housing.

I usually make it a point to take a close look at the children on their way to schools.

1. How many girls can one see?

2. Do the kids walk, ride cycles or take public transport?

3. Do they carry their books in proper school bags?

4. Do they have footwear?

In most parts of Maharashtra, the signs are very good. There are almost as many girls as there are boys going to school every morning, the children usually have clean clothes, well-oiled hair, chappals in their feet (shoes are rare) and carry their daily burden of books in school bags.

But most seem to walk to schools. There are few children on bicycles or waiting at bus stands.

An aside: Radhika Chaddha, a school friend of mine who is now a strategic consultant in Chennai, sent me an amazing book that she helped produce. It is called Going To School In India. This is how it starts:

"Getting to school in India is a wild ride. Every school day, millions of school children climb into school buses, sit on each other's laps in cycle-rickshaws, walk along the edge of mountains, cross scorching deserts on rickety bicycles and swing across raging blue rivers on dangling rope swings --- just to get to school. Against great odds they come, because they believe going to school can change their lives, and if it does, it was certainly worth the ride."

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An Awkward Corner : children

Watching Children Walking To School