Bihar: Girls Rising from the darken to brighten.

On Friday, March 8, New York, the metropolis that harbours the UN, rose up on International Women's Day to watch the story of a Muslim girl from Kolkata unfold across campus screens: 'Girls Rising'.

Ruksana, an 11-year-old living street kid from Kolkata, is one of the nine that feature in 'Girl Rising', a film about the problem that girls around the world face to get education.

Ruksana's story, adapted for film and narrated by Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra, was picked after screenwriters and producers conducted hundreds of interviews with girls trying to get education in countries across the globe. Nine were chosen and their stories were put together in a series of fictionalized documentaries. 

Sooni Taraporevala, screenplay writer for the award winning 'Salaam Bombay', turned Ruksana's story into a screenplay for the movie. In the film 'Girl Rising', produced by education campaign 10X10, the figure for girls out of school worldwide is put at 66 million. The 10X10 campaign, which is in partnership with Intel, says that educating girls has a significant positive impact on their health, safety and future earning power.

Bihar, poised to celebrate its 101st 'birthday', can take pride in its efforts to give a helping hand to girls over the past decade.

In a white paper produced during the first term of the NDA alliance, getting out-of-school kids into classrooms and ensuring that girls stay within the system was seen as a key to human resource development.

Like Ruksana of Kolkata, thousands of girls yearn for school, and these girls are not just street kids. They can be found in rural Bihar and in the cities. And, many girls deprived of education are not from poor families.  

Zubair is a girl studying Communication in a college in Patna. Her family may be considered well-off by most standards: they own a flat, have a comfortable lifestyle and are held in high regard by their neighbours. But she feels exceptionally lucky to have been allowed to study after she completed her secondary school. 

She says, "It is really difficult for Muslim girls to be allowed to follow their career dreams. Sad to say, even educated and highly respected elders criticize my parents for giving me 'too much education and freedom'. Sometimes, on the news and in the newspapers, one comes across politicians saying that my community is backward. They want more concessions and facilities so that Muslims can prosper. But the same leaders think nothing of the fact that the girls are still being kept semi-literate. How can the community in Bihar develop when it is blind to human resource development of half its members?"

Prema, a primary schoolteacher from Kalaser village in Sasaram can remember when it was a scandal in her block for a woman to be ferried on a bicycle. About 17 years ago she caused a 'scandal', she says, when as a new bride, her teacher husband would transport her by bicycle to the workplace. 

 "The women thought I was shameless, and the elder men frowned upon my husband. And when I learnt to ride a bicycle, a couple of old women called me dirty names!" she laughs.

Today, it is a wonderful sight to see, in the villages of Bihar, scores of girls in their uniform, cycling to school and back. The bicycle gave the girls mobility and greater access to schools.

















Source : timesofindia.indiatimes.com