In India, Girl Labourers Quit Work for School

Case Study

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In Chevella, a town near Hyderabad in the state of Andhra Pradesh, 55 girls aged 9 to 15 sit cross-legged on a classroom floor, intensely absorbed in the day's lessons. When the teacher asks a question, dozens of hands shoot up, and the girls share ideas and well formed opinions. Their ease and self-confidence make them seem as if they had been in school for years.

Yet several months ago, most of these girls couldn't read, write, add or subtract. Instead of going to school, many of them had spent their childhood working in fields, small factories or at home. Now, enrolled in a year-long residential camp run by the MV foundation, a Hyderabad-based Non Government Aid Organisation, they study for entrance exams to secondary schools where they will begin grade 7.

The camp provides intensive education to 90 girls aged 9 to 14, and sometimes older, who have had little or no schooling. A similar camp in a neighbouring village caters to 150 boys.

Manju, 15, sits with her arms folded, textbooks stacked in front of her. Like the other students, Manju wears freshly laundered clothes and meticulously braided hair. But the pretty flowers and ribbons gracing her braids contrast markedly with the hard look of resolve on her face.

Photo courtesy of UNICEF

A year ago, Manju was illiterate. A full-time agricultural labourer in her home town of Prodattur, she put in 12 hour days, beginning at 5:00 am as a flower picker earning 28 cents a day, and continuing until early evening as a field worker on the estate of her family's landlord. Now, her one hope in life is to get into secondary school.

"I used to feel jealous of the girls next door when I saw them going to school every day" says Manju, who started classes a year ago when MV Foundation opened night school in her village. Manju liked the drop-in classes and decided she wanted to continue her education at MV's camp.

But it wasn't easy to get there. Her parents thought the idea was a waste of time until MV's volunteers convinced them otherwise. MV has sent hundreds of youth volunteers into villages to urge parents to enrol their children in school. The task is not easy in a country where many parents depend on income from their children's work. Families are especially reluctant to educate girls, who are often married off at the age of 13 and from then on devote their work and income to the husband's family.

Manju's decision to begin school at an age when many girls get married angered her older brother. After she enrolled in camp, he went there several times to discourage her. Manju, however, stood firm.

"I realise school would be my way out" says Manju, who wants to run her own business some day. I want to show my brother and the village adults that they are wrong when they say that, being an elder girl, I should not study."

In addition to room and board, camp students get freshly washed clothes and schoolbooks. They enrol in classes suited to their abilities, where teachers emphasise hands-on learning and encourage the girls to speak their minds. At the end of their stay, the girls who are not ready for secondary school may study for entry into primary school at one of the three-month camps run by MV.

Founded in 1990, MV is one of several organisations working with state and local governments to improve education as a way to keep children out of the workforce. Such efforts are vital in Andhra Pradesh, where the percentage of children holding paid jobs is nearly double that of the rest of the country. About 1.75 million children work as bonded labourers to pay off family debts. This state also has one of the poorest education records in India. An estimated 13 million children in Andhra Pradesh - including 45% of girls in the state - do not attend school.

"A key strategy to keep children out of the workforce is to provide free and compulsory education" says Richard Young, Chief of Community Development for UNICEF in New Delhi. "If all children aged five and six were to be enrolled in school this year, and then retained in school year by year, child labour would be eliminated in the next generation."

Photo courtesy of UNICEF

Sociologist Neera Burra agrees. Dr Neera, author of Born to Work, Child Labour in India (Oxford 1995) says that pulling low-paid children out of the workforce and enrolling them in school may provide the added benefit of raising adults' wages and increasing family income. "The bargaining power of local workers goes down if there is cheap labour available," she says, "and child labour is cheap labour." MV believes that efforts to get working children into school must include employers. At MV's night schools, which also serve as meeting centres, parents and employers are invited to discuss the benefits of children's education. Swayed by these talks, 22 employers have released children from work to go to school; several have even paid their fees.

Even with these encouraging gestures and the overall success of MV's programmes, Andhra Pradesh has a long way to go to reach the millions of children in the state not attending school. With few opportunities for advancement, many of them face a future of drudgery in low-paying, dead-end jobs.

Such is the case for Mani, a tall, slender 12-year-old who works 8 to 10 hours a day on a farm harvesting grapes and dipping them in vats of pesticide. Behind her, a group of girls, aged 8 to 14, spend their days bent over vines as they hack at weeds with long hoes, sending clouds of dust to the wind. Mani is proud of the fact that she earns money. But she admits she has no choice in the matter - her parents tell her they need the income. Asked what she would do with her life if she had the choice though, Mani doesn't hesitate to reply: "I would go to school."

(Story by Laura Lorenz Hess - UNICEF feature No. 00168)

Australia supports UNICEF, the International Labour Organisation and various local Non-Government Organisations throughout the South Asian region.