In the winding alleys of Haryana’s Nalwa village, Hisar district, just about 165 km west of New Delhi, India’s Capital, a group of teenage girls takes time out from studying and housework to meet in the evening. They talk of leaving, to study in a bigger city and build a life of their own.
For Raveena Saroha, 16, the appeal of going out to study stems from her desire to “experience the world outside”. Saroha, who hails from a family of farm labourers, has relatives who moved to Delhi, and who, in their weekly calls, tell her about the many reputed colleges that she can go to, given her calibre and performance in school.
Currently in Class 12, she says, “I do not know about the admission process or the entrance exam, as I do not have my own phone to use for research and studies.” The first-generation learner has only one phone at home, which she gets little access to. When she imagines her future, she thinks of studying Punjabi, her favourite subject, and returning to Hisar to teach. But the path in front of her has not been laid out just yet.
Raveena Siroha | Photo Credit: SHASHI SHEKHAR KASHYAP
The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) (rural) 2023, ‘Beyond Basics’, which surveyed 35,000 youth in the 14-18 age group in one or two rural districts in each State, showed that 90% of surveyed households had smartphones. Of the surveyed youth, 94.7% of males and 89.8% of females could use them. Of the males who knew how to use smartphones, 43.7% owned such a device, while in females, only 19.8% owned one.
In Sirsa district, this number was 32.4% for males and 9.9% for females in the 14-16 age group. The percentage was higher in youth aged 17-18, where 69.6% of males and 36.8% of females owned phones. This device gap has an impact on how much information comes to girls for higher education, in terms of online application to universities and paid or free online study resources.
Hisar, one of the 22 districts in Haryana, has many villages where vast expanses of fields are accompanied with some schools, skill training centres, and colleges. In 2023, the National Commission for Women recorded 1,115 complaints of crime against women, of the total 28,811. As per the 2011 Census, the sex ratio of Haryana stood at 879. As per government numbers shared in 2022, the sex ratio in the State was 865 for 2017-2019.
Sunil Jaglan, a gender and education activist in the State, points out that boys’ education is prioritised. While many girls would like to study, even those with the highest marks are left with little information about what to do next, and how to apply to colleges for entrance tests, he adds.
Jaglan, who started the ‘Selfie with Daughter’ and ‘Lado go online’ campaigns to encourage the presence of girls online, and normalise society’s outlook towards this in rural Haryana, says, “Earlier, all information about admissions would appear in local papers and TV channels. Due to the changing nature of information intake, the only way for students to know more is through their phones, as most information comes to phones.”
He says most girls are ambitious and want to study further, so some look to private companies that guide students, while others manage to do the research on their own when their parents allow them to use smartphones at home.
Yogender Singh, a government school teacher in Yamunanagar district, says smartphones are still a luxury for many in rural Haryana. A good smartphone would set a family back by ₹8,000, and though less expensive than a laptop, it is still hard to afford as a personal device.
“Many families are struggling to make ends meet, so they cannot afford smartphones. In addition to this, they have to recharge data, which earlier used to cost around ₹100 a month but has gone up to ₹200 a month in the past year or so,” says Singh, who teaches students from Classes 9 to 12. There is also the pressure to get married at a young age, he says.
A different reality for those with means
Meanwhile, a handful of students who have the means and access to information, hope to change the situation in their hometowns. A few kilometres down the same road slathered in dust from a highway construction, another student has similar dreams of going to a city and studying. Hailing from a well-to-do family, the daughter of a government teacher, Surabhi (name changed on request), who studies in one of the few private Central Board of Secondary Education schools in Nalwa, says the admission process has been smooth for her.
“There are two tablets and a laptop at home, so that has helped me figure out the admission process,” she says. Surabhi adds that the access helped her in filling out forms for the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) for undergraduate courses in Central universities and the Common Law Admission Test, the pan-India entrance exam for entry into law colleges. She gets enough time on the devices to prepare for the tests, with online material.
A lot of study material is available online that girls are not able to access easily because they don’t own phones or are not given free use of them. | Photo Credit: SHASHI SHEKHAR KASHYAP
The ASER survey noted, “Girls use the devices equally and equally well as the boys in rural settings when they are given equal and unfettered access to the devices. In contrast, when their access is constrained, their learning also is likely to be affected negatively.” It also noted that the National Education Policy 2020 strongly recommends leveraging technology to improve educational processes and outcomes by promoting digital literacy and tech-based initiatives.
It further observed that the data show that more females in the age group are likely to aspire to higher education than their male counterparts. However, while similar proportions of male and female youth reported having used a smartphone for education-related tasks and for social media during the week, males were twice as likely as females to have ever used a smartphone to access online services such as paying a bill or booking a ticket (38% of males vs 19% of females had ever done so). Up to 50.6% of males had an email ID compared with 29.9% of females.
Parents worry about ‘misuse’
Like Raveena, many girls in villages have restricted access to devices. Piyush Sangwan, 16, a Class 12 student got a tablet during the COVID-19 pandemic from her government school. Recalling how she shifted to online classes then, she says most of her studies now take place on the device. Her mother, who keeps a close eye on her while she uses it, says, “Many students misuse these devices, so we have to make sure that our daughters are not taking the wrong path. We restrict access for their safety.”
Priyanka Barwar, 18, who is currently seeking admission in a BA course in Hisar, says she is still confused about what she wants to do next — a distance learning course while preparing for the civil services exam or a professional or skill-based course that would secure her a job. For her too, research hours are limited. “Whenever I want to use the phone, my parents are concerned that I am talking to someone,” she says. The same rule does not apply to her brothers, aged 16 and 12, who play the video game PUBG when they get access to the phone. She asks her 16-year-old brother to help her find courses.
The ASER survey showed males were also far more likely than females to use a smartphone for entertainment. So, 69% of males versus 46% of females reported playing games on a smartphone in the week preceding the survey.
Some parents are also worried about how society will perceive their daughters once they have a phone, points out Anjum Islam, 23, a lawyer who grew up in Haryana’s Mewat and fought stereotypes to pursue her educational aspirations.
“When I started my internship in college and saved up some money, I could finally buy my own phone. I had to explain to my family that I was not doing anything wrong with having access to the information that is out there in the world. People in the village would still tell my family that I had been ruined because I had a presence online,” she says, recalling the online trolling.
She now volunteers for the ‘Selfie with Daughter’ campaign, which aims at instilling a sense of pride among parents in their daughters in the State. She works on cases pertaining to gender-based violence.
Economic stress doesn’t curtail dreams
In Kanwari village, Khushi Rathi, 15, wakes up at 4 a.m. to study on the one smartphone shared among five siblings. Since her brothers use the phone during the day, Khushi, who her family calls “studious”, tries to make the most of the morning hours.
While she hopes to become a doctor and is preparing for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) via YouTube videos and online applications, her younger brothers, in Class 8, are interested in engineering and technology.
“I decided I wanted to become a doctor when I saw that there are not enough doctors in government hospitals in Hisar,” Khushi says. She uses the National Council of Educational Research and Training mobile application to study Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.
Her father, Dinesh Rathi, who works as a truck driver, often drives to other States, so phone access is interrupted for the children. “I want my daughter to study hard and make a name for herself, but I cannot afford a new phone at the moment,” he says.
The NEET forms cost ₹1,700 for the general category; ₹1,600 for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) and Economically Weaker Section (EWS); and ₹1,000 for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Persons with Benchmark Disabilities (PwBDs).
In the CUET forms, students are asked to provide their details as well as preferences for test centres. Students also have to attach copies of their identity proof and caste certificates if any. The fee structure is ₹400 per subject for the general category, ₹375 for OBCs and EWS category students, and ₹350 per subject for SCs, STs, PwBDs, and gender-minority students.
Speaking about how smartphones play an important role in the admission and examination preparation phases, Jaglan says, “Since the pandemic, education has moved online slowly. Information on admissions and forms are available online.” He adds that most rural areas have Common Service Centres — government centres aimed at assisting people in areas of agriculture, health, education, banking, and financial services — free of cost. Though students get assistance while applying for scholarships, information on admissions is not as accessible in these centres.
When Khushi isn’t studying online, she is found buried in her books, joke her brothers. With a Science book and a Hindi translation of Rabindranath Tagore’s short stories in her hands, Khushi, who finds happiness in borrowing storybooks from the community library, says preparatory material is expensive and hard to find. The only time she stepped out of the district was during a school trip to Ambala in Class 5, a formative memory for her. She hopes to study outside the district and later return to practise medicine.
Unsure of whether her father will be able to afford the fees, Khushi remains focused on the end goal: “Not many girls have become doctors in my district. I hope to change that.”
Published - June 28, 2024 12:20 am IST
