52% rural girls attend secondary school in Gujarat, worst in India, says NSS: Wither Kanya Kelavni enrollment drive?

In a revelation which may prove to be a major embarrassment to the Gujarat government’s much-publicized Kanya Kalavni annual fete aimed at ensuring cent per cent attendance in school, the authoritative National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) has revealed in its latest report, “Key Indicators of Social Consumption in India: Education”, that Gujarat has a far fewer percentage of rural girls in the age group 14-17 going to school than any of the 21 major states of India.
Based on NSS survey between January and June 2014, the data show that Gujarat’s just about 52 per cent rural girls attend school in the age group 14-17, as against the national average of 72 per cent. The data show that, while Kerala and Himachal Pradesh top in sending their rural girls to school with 96 and 95 per cent, even poorer states are far ahead: Assam 78 per cent, Jharkhand 72 per cent, Bihar 69 per cent, UP 68 per cent, Madhya Pradesh 67 per cent, Odisha 63 per cent, and Rajasthan 59 per cent. The NSS report was released on Tuesday.

Children in the age-group 14-17 attend secondary school, suggesting that there may be a huge dropout of girls after they finish primary education. While no reasons have been assigned in the NSSO report, there is a general view among educationists and experts that distance to school and continued conservatism in rural communities are the main reasons why girls fail to go to attend school at the secondary level in Gujarat. Yet, the fact is, things are no better at the primary level.
Comparative data for the age-group 6-13 reveal that Gujarat is behind as many as 11 other major states out of 21 in sending rural girls to school. While in Gujarat 92 per cent rural girls in this age group attend school, the best performer here are Kerala and Himachal Pradesh with 99 per cent each, followed by Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand, 98 per cent each. With two states performing equal to Gujarat (Odisha and Karnataka), only eight out of 21 major states perform worse than Gujarat.

Gujarat claims to be one of the fastest urbanizing states of India. Yet education to urban girls appears to have remained a major issue, NSS data further suggest. Thus, in the age-group 14-17, Gujarat’s 82 per cent urban girls attend school, which is worse than all 21 major states with the exception of six – Haryana (81 per cent), Telangana (80 per cent), Jharkhand (79 per cent), Rajasthan (72 per cent), UP (71 per cent) and Odisha (59 per cent).
As for the age group 6-13, things are equally bad for Gujarat’s urban girls: 91 per cent of them attend school, which is worse than all major states except five – Jharkhand (89 per cent), Bihar (88 per cent), Rajasthan (87 per cent), Haryana (84 per cent) and UP (79 per cent). The best performer in primary education is Tamil Nadu, where 99 per cent urban girls attend school, followed by Telangana and Assam 98 per cent.

The data come close on the heels of the just-accomplished Gujarat government-sponsored “celebration” to enroll cent per cent children at the primary level -- Shala Praveshotsav and Kanya Kelavani Mahotsav. While the annual fete in the rural areas took place on from June 11 to 13, 2015, it urban areas it happened on June 18 to 20, 2015. Government officials, ranging from IAS and IPS babus to district level class one officials, are involved in the fete, which was started by Narendra Modi about a decade ago during his chief ministership.

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Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

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A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

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