Woman’s dream of educating girls comes true

In the liberalisation year census of 1991 in India, four states were identified as lagging behind other major states in terms of democratic transition. These four states also had the lowest literacy levels.

The female literacy rate in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh was found to be abysmally low with only one out of four girls in the 7+ age group being able to read and write.

Although many were enrolled in school at the beginning of the year, the dropout rates were high — nearly 41 per cent in primary schools, with girls typically being pulled out to shoulder household responsibilities until they were married. In 1992-93 only 55 per cent of girls aged 11 to 14 were attending school as against 61 per cent in the younger age group.

This story had played out in the life of Basanti Devi, the youngest of six siblings born in 1933 to a farmer in Chudiyala village, Uttar Pradesh. She was named after the harvest festival of Basant Panchami, which fell on the day she was born.

Married to Chaudhary Brahm Singh at the age of 23, she moved to Deoli village near Gulaothi, a town earlier called Gulab Basi for the large-scale cultivation of roses there. Like many other girls in the state, she had no formal education.

Basanti spent the next 13 years in Deoli until the family moved to Bulandshahr, 77 kilometres from Delhi where her husband began practising law. The couple faced economic hardship initially, but their financial situation improved over time.

They were able to educate their children who went on to find jobs in the army and legal services. Through all of this, Basanti nurtured a dream — education for girls, something she never had access to.

After battling asthma for years, Basanti succumbed in 1994. Bereaved, Brahm Singh decided to establish an education trust in her memory in Deoli. In 1995, he laid the foundation for a school and college that today provides primary (4th grade) to intermediate education (12th grade) for up to 2,000 girls and Bachelor of Arts (BA) for up to 325 girls.

Co-educational degree courses such as BEd (Bachelor of Education), BTC (Basic Teaching Certificate) & MEd (Master of Education) are also conducted. The institutes under the trust cater to girls from all communities residing within a 30-kilometre radius. The Basanti Devi Degree College, established in 2002, is affiliated to Chaudhary Charan Singh University (formerly Meerut University).

Given the lack of awareness on the importance of educating girls, there were immense challenges in the beginning.

“My grandfather consolidated all his land to put together basic infrastructure for primary education. It was expensive and though most of it was his personal wealth and retirement savings, support also poured in small amounts from key people in the area. The objective initially was to focus on primary education and ensure that at the very least, girls had the opportunity to finish junior high school. He went from village to village talking to families, telling them to send their girls to school. He offered to run school buses even if there was just one girl [from any village] willing to study at our institution,” says Kush Teotia, whose father Colonel (retd) Anil Kumar, now manages the degree college after Brahm Singh died in 2012.

The trust began with educating about 100 girls from neighbouring villages and soon that number went up to a few hundred. Within two years, backed by local support, Brahm Singh decided to expand the facility to have more rooms and provide education up to grade 12. The strength of the inter college reached 1,000 girls within five years of operation with buses running on multiple routes within a radius of 30 kilometres around the village.

Since the trust’s establishment, a large number of girls have been exempt from paying fees or have subsidised fee plans, in addition to government-sponsored scholarship schemes.

“It was reassuring to see the girls in our community and in our area get what they rightfully deserved — basic education. But we soon realised that a bigger problem existed. Those who wanted to pursue higher studies would have to travel at least 20-25 kilometres one way to get to the nearest college. Also, the same families that sent their daughters to our school were unwilling to allow them to travel daily for higher studies. There was no chance of sending their daughters to cities such as Delhi or Meerut, allowing them to live in hostels there,” says Teotia.

This led to the establishment of a degree college adjacent to the inter college in the village.

For decades the only means of education in the village was a government school that provided education up to grade 4 for both boys and girls. For grades 5 onwards, there was a school in Gulaothi (D.N. Inter College, set up in 1944) which provided education up to grade 12 in arts. The boys-only school was a three-kilometre walk for the students from Deoli.

“The setting up of the degree college was a pivotal moment as we now have primary education to post-graduate courses. This was exponentially tougher than the inter-college as the regulations are quite strict in terms of minimum level of facilities and faculty and a centralised admissions process. The financial burden was very high. We had to scale back our ambitions and go one step at a time in terms of what we could offer. We started with BA and BEd courses in 2002. Six years later, we added MA, MEd and BTC. Efforts are on to expand course offerings,” says Teotia.

Over the last three years the trust has been working on upgrading facilities, for instance, providing Wi-Fi on campus, creating a free library of more than 3,000 books, organising educational tours at subsidised rates to Agra and Delhi for events such as the Book Fair, Trade Fair and special tours of the Parliament, Rashtrapati Bhawan, India Gate, Nehru Planetarium and the Doll Museum. The college has also been conducting seminars bringing faculty from various colleges and universities. They are also exploring the possibility of adding a BSc course later this year or next.

Basanti Devi Degree College was given a Special Recognition Award at the 17th Annual CTAUN Conference at UN in January, organised with help from the UN Department of Public Information. The focus of this year’s conference was on Stewardship for a Sustainable World: Education in the Sustainable Development Goals.

As per latest census in 2011, Bulandshahr district has a total population of approximately 3.5 million, of which 1.65 million are females. The literacy rate is 70 per cent — 82 per cent for males and 56 per cent for females. The adult literacy rates for females was as low as 25.3 per cent in 1991, rising to 42 per cent in 2001, and then to 54.3 per cent in 2008.

“It is gratifying to see the improvement in literacy rate, which has now almost doubled and a large part of that can be attributed to increased awareness and accessible educational facilities. A lot still needs to be done to close the gap between males and females. Denying education to girls is not just a matter of gender discrimination, it is bad economics and bad social politics. Investment in girls’ education translates directly into well-being of the whole family, better healthcare, poverty reduction and better economic performance,” says Teotia.

Manika Dhama is an independent writer based in Dubai.