Educating rural people is one of the principal challenges for the equitable achievement of EFA objectives and the MDGs. With less than 50% of children in school, marked gender inequality and a shortage of qualified teachers, rural areas are the furthest away from achieving EFA. Building on this background, Kailash Satyarthi, Chairperson, Global March Against Child Labour

Investing in Education for Rural People to achieve EFA and MDGs

While addressing the challenges in rural literacy, one must not forget that the largest proportions of illiterate rural masses are girls and women. We must confess with honesty and humility our failure in achieving gender parity goal in education. This is also as we know the first clear setback in MDGs. Who will own this responsibility if not you and me? I don’t hear any serious voice in rescheduling ourselves in fixing a new timeline to achieve this goal. Is this going to be the fate of rest of the MDGs and Dakar Framework of Action, I am afraid. But, I am not generalizing my fear as we all have witnesses the good practices emerging out of the poor countries, like Bangladesh. They have proven that poverty is no excuse in maintaining gender inequality and gender discrimination in schools.

When we are talking about the curse of rural illiteracy we should remember the plight of millions of children, women and men who are enslaved, sold and bought like animals, remain victims of intergenerational cycles of illiteracy, poverty and slavery. Illiteracy means bondage and slavery for them. As a human rights activist for the last two and a half decade, I have personally come across thousands of people who have entered in the endless dark tunnel of servitude as their great grandfathers have put their thumb impression on a blank or written piece of paper which they could not read, and the paper turned into bond of slavery forever. I have liberated many children who don’t know why they are forced to work. Some question why their parents were not able to read and write and why they themselves are deprived of education, which could be the weapon of their liberation. Therefore, I humbly appeal to all of you that while talking of education, we are not just talking of human resource development or economic growth; we are talking about human slavery; we are talking about the liberty and dignity of a human being and that needs utmost urgency. We must ask ourselves here are we talking about urgency in this very beautiful room

In the rural context illiteracy is also linked with landlessness, lack of understanding, need and capacity to organize for collective bargaining in the vast informal economic and unorganized sector. Most of the unorganized or un-unionized workforce is illiterate or semi-literate unaware of their basic rights and does not get even the minimum wage. This remains the biggest obstacle in land reforms, a serious reason of social exclusion, systemic and systematic impoverishment and powerlessness for urban poor and even trafficking of human beings. Trafficking, as you might know, has become the second most lucrative trade; with more than 10 billion dollars involved in child trafficking only. In many countries particularly of South Asia the caste system plays an important role in social exclusion, gender discrimination and economic exploitation. The most effective tool to dilute these social barriers is education.

I am prompted by some of the good practices cited here by Ms Naledi Pandor, Minister of South Africa, Mr George Saitoti, Minister of Kenya and many more. I would like to underline that there are hundreds of thousands of such good practices prevailing in this world initiated by civil society organizations. I share my experiences in India briefly in the creation of Child Friendly Villages, because I strongly believe that a combination of bottom-up and top-down approach has to be evolved. The need, involvement, concern, participation, accountability, decision in evolving effective strategies and actions has to be bottom-up, whereas, the budgetary allocation, timely disbursement of fund, transparency and accountability, facilitation, capacity building and empowerment may be top-down.

Child Friendly Village is a model which my local organization Bachpan Bachao Andolan has evolved in 100 villages in India and is replicating them. The village is the ultimate unit where people’s participation, a process of democratic decision making and implementation of educational activities and literacy has to be ensured in most countries, especially in agrarian societies.

In a child friendly village the involvement of the children not only guarantees hundred percent literacy, school enrolment and retention in a village but inspires the illiterate parents to value the power of words and numbers for themselves.

The creation of child friendly villages involves the achievement of the following 4 processes.

• Identification and Withdrawal of child labourers from the villages
• Mainstreaming of All Children in Schools
• Adult Village Panchayat recognizes and incorporates the voices of children
• Social and Economic development of the village community

The first step in the process towards the creation of child friendly village is the identification and withdrawal of all child labourers from the village. The next then is mainstreaming all children into schools, through school enrollments and ensuring that retention levels are maintained and drop-outs are curbed. Child participation is encouraged by conducting democratic elections wherein the children elect their representatives to form the ‘Bal Panchayat’ (Children’s Governing Body). The officially elected adult institution or the ‘Gram Panchayat’ is encouraged to work in close cohesion with the child leaders. And, finally, through institutional building, Self Help Groups, networking with the government and non-government departments and promotion of income generation activities helps to achieve the social and economic development of the underprivileged section of the village, ushering in the child friendly village.

In our experience of the child friendly villages, we have seen that gender parity in education is a direct outcome of the processes in the formation of child friendly villages. In fact, among the 130 child friendly villages, 72 Bal Panchayats are headed by girls. Ramchander Nagar ( Bihar) had no primary school. The Bal Panchayat with support from Village Panchayat in 2002, started child friendly school (attended by more than 200 students) as a substitute.

Our interventions and advocacy have led to mass awareness about rights of children and adults. Awareness has in turn led to empowerment. The villagers are confident while asking for information and implementation of Governmental Rural Development/ Welfare schemes. The community is more tolerant towards the age-old disparities on issues like caste, creed and gender as it strives for an equal, prosperous and just society. This right-based approach expands development objectives beyond physical assets and income growth.

Other innovative ways for motivating and engaging the rural masses should also be evolved. There should be a common denominator in these techniques, though they have to be customized to each village or socio-cultural region. We have been quite successful in using folk culture like street theaters, folk songs, etc, through a campaign called Mukti Caravan (Campaign on Wheels), which has covered more than hundred villages, interfacing and interacting with millions of people in the last few years. Similarly, the use of icons of success brings catalytic impact in motivating the rural masses. For instance, a very poor person from a village preferably a woman belonging to an indigenous community, gets education and a good job. If she goes to the illiterate villager to convince them about the need for education, nothing is more powerful and effective than her. Sometimes, the socio-cultural institutions are much more effective, but we hardly see the preacher of temples, churches, mosques, etc, teaching and motivating people towards education.

Also, as I have said before in unorganized sector, we must fix accountability and responsibility on the employers for education of the workforce. Employers should take statutory responsibility of educating their workers.

We have discussed yesterday thoroughly the necessity of policy coherence, inter-ministerial/ departmental coordination and mutli-sectoral partnership in achieving rural literacy.

Finally, I would hope that the governments, inter-governmental agencies, civil society organizations will strengthen a genuine partnership in pooling all kinds of resources together and investing them to make the humanity more enlightened with the light of literacy.