Aspirations! Who wants it?

Visiting field areas for work is always an exhilarating experience as you get to learn much faster than you can learn from a report. As one keenly listens to people and their observations one tends make more connections in one's head. Many assumptions get challenged. Many new learnings emerge. 

I recently visited areas around the Indo-Nepal border in Uttar Pradesh. One of the most interesting insight that I got during this travel is that there is active push-back to adolescents’ aspirations. The Community Developers or the field workers working in these areas found this active push-back as one of the greatest challenges in working with adolescents. I would have assumed it is around getting boys and girls to sit together for the sessions in the villages, which was surprisingly seen as a positive thing by the mothers with whom I talked to.  They felt it was important. However, I heard that the greatest challenge came from the village elders who think by engaging with the adolescents and by talking about their infinite potential, we are increasing their hopes, their aspirations (मन बढ़ा रहे हो इनका!!). Those in power, fear aspiration. They are the gate-keepers and they do not have a neutral position on it. They are actively opposing it. This is making me think about the way we address aspirations. We assume, it is an open field as no one has talked about aspirations so far. Whereas their is a formidable opponent already present there, challenging it. 

I have been travelling in the eastern Uttar Pradesh and talking to adolescent girls since 2013 (in my previous role with UNICEF and in current role with Breakthrough https://inbreakthrough.org/) and it has often struck me that they go blank when you ask what would they like to become when they grow up. When you ask, what do they see themselves as when they grow older, an eerie silence ensues. At times one of them open their mouth to say, "Whatever our elder wants!" Many of us have often tried to push them to think more. Often discussed if it is a question of early marriage only as the age of marriage is steadily increasing and hovers around the legal age of marriage almost. What then justifies this void, this blank? The active role of gatekeepers in pushing this back is often underestimated. Whil working with the adolescents on building aspirations, we have to remember this active challenge at every step. They use various methods such as actively talking against need for women to have an aspiration/ambition, creating a feeling of insecurity by circulating stories either around girls facing sexual harassment whenever out of the villages or girls making life choices and its disastrous social effect on their families. They have a firm grip on the elder men of the family and keep the norm in place. It is not unknown to have a family or two in each village who have shown completely different behaviour and helped their girls to ful fill their aspirations but like my colleague Joshy often says, "Individual behaviour does not change the norm!" 

As I visited the Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) in Bhathat of Gorakhpur, the first thing that caught our eyes was how clean and well decorated the campus was. Each wall was painted. "The girls painted them", the teacher taking us to the warden's office said. We started with an interaction with the warden. She was all praises for the Community Developer of  Breakthrough who visits the school regularly to work with the girls on countering gender based discrimination. However, the discussion soon turned towards the greatest problem she faces. KGBVs are for girls from disadvantaged sections of the society. It is a residential facility. It is a dream for the communities. Most of these girls were already out of school. They are prepared for the middle school through bridge courses and then they stay for three years in the KGBV and study up to Grade 8^th. And there remains the pain point of the teacher/warden we met. She said, “ You are leaving these girls in the middle of the sea after showing them a glimpse of the shore! Why showing them the shore even? 14/15 year old girls can’t fight for their rights to continue their studies when you send them back home. Should not they at least study up to 10^th?” As we sat there a few mothers indeed came to her already pleading that she should not send back the girls home after 8^th. She should try to send them to another school instead. She looked at us and asked, “What should I tell them now?”

As we went into the class, it got even more clearer to us why the teacher felt so intensely emotional about the loss of opportunity. In spite apparent resource constraints, we met a class full of enthusiastic and extremely bright students from SC, ST as well as Minority groups. These children not only had mastery over literary Hindi, they actually spoke in sign-language with their deaf and mute classmates. I was amazed to know that all the children sit through the sign language classes so that the girls who are learning have peers to practice! I remembered that as a student of Social Work I used to visit a school in New Delhi which completely segregated the children with “special” needs. I wished that those schools have changed their ways too like the one we visited. The classroom in KGBV was full of information that made children aware of political scenario of India too. Children came up and talked freely about their affinity for various political parties. However, on the other hand, we got to know that the central government has stopped funding for vocational education in these schools! What a loss! It made me think if the gate-keepers of power are worried here too about the aspirations of the girls? Is it because of that they stop the learning mid-way? Is it because of that these girls are left middle of nowhere? क्या सरकार  भी डरती है के इनका मन बढ़ जायेगा? Is the government worried if these girls indeed aspire to achieve their fullest potential, what will they do!

N.B: The visit covered the work of Breakthrough Trust. All pictures are courtesy the organisation.