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Journalism of Courage
Arunatai Thete of Loni Khurd in Kopargaon is a worried woman. She has tried every trick8212;even feigned a heart attack8212;to get her 18-year-old daughter Sangeeta to marry a boy from the nearby village. A stream of relatives too has intervened to make the girl 8216;8216;see reason8217;8217;. However, no compromise has been reached yet. Intent on pursuing her dream to go abroad, Sangeeta is adamant that marriage can wait. Meanwhile Arunatai is ill yet again.
This is a scene being replayed with increasing frequency in most houses in rural Maharashtra. In the pursuit of education, girls here are putting off marriage. Even if they are marrying, it8217;s definitely not village boys. City boys are not only better educated but also help provide the girls a route out of the village and probably to a career.
A majority of the state8217;s prominent educational institutions in the rural areas belong to politicians8212;D Y Patil, Patangrao Kadam, Sureshdada Jain, Padamsinh Patil, Swarupsinh Naik, Ranjeet Deshmukh, Rohidas Patil are cases in point.
For those like Annasaheb Phakkad Gawande, a small farmer from the drought-hit Astagaon village in Ahmednagar district, his daughter8217;s dream to become a doctor is no longer an unattainable one. 8216;8216;She goes to the school run by Vikhe Patil Saheb former Union minister Balasaheb Vikhe Patil. She will go to the college which Saheb has started and then become a doctor,8217;8217; adds a proud Gawande. Though steeped in debts, Gawande is unwavering in his plans for his daughter8217;s future.
Pan to Baramati, almost 500 km away in western Maharashtra, where the seeds of the state8217;s first self-sufficient rural educational institution exclusively for girls were sown by Appasaheb Pawar, the late brother of Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar. He set up a facility for daughters of poor farmers at Sharadanagari, which provides almost 453 courses tailor-made for their needs.
During a chance meeting, Appasheb explained his reasons for establishing such a centre8212;educated boys from villages migrated to the cities and thereafter married city girls. Lacking any knowledge of city life, girls from rural areas lagged behind in education and other spheres. The courses at Sharadanagari would empower the rural daughters and help them find a good match.
That was in the mid-8217;90s. Now, Sharadanagari8217;s daughters have turned the situation around. With its example being emulated by other politician cum educationists, it is village boys who find themselves hunting for brides.
Says former Union minister and Chairman of the Pravara Rural Education Trust at Loni in Ahmednagar district Balasaheb Vikhe-Patil: 8216;8216;Rural Maharashtra is now seeing a steady decline in the number of youths pursuing higher studies. Drought, unemployment and declining family income are forcing boys out of schools in search of employment. Girls want to marry as late as 26 years. Boys want to marry but cannot find girls.8217;8217;
