A country prepares its future leaders and working population through the level of education it provides. The urban areas in India have many educational institutions and prestigious schools, but rural areas again face the issue of lack of educational facilities in remote areas. The capability to read and write is termed as literacy. The 2011 census data shows that the literacy rate in rural India is 67.7%. The female literacy rate is 57.93%, which is lower than the male literacy rate of 77.15%.
The urban areas have comparatively higher literacy rates than rural areas. According to the Educational Statistics Report released by the Ministry of Human Resource Development in 2018, the overall literacy rate is 64.7%, out of which the female literacy rate is 56.8% and the male literacy rate is 72.3%.
When children are not able to access education and knowledge, they become prone to getting attracted to crime and malpractices for earning money. Families in rural are bigger in size, and the wages of parents are not sufficient for livelihood. This leads to employment of children in small and medium enterprises such as carpet making.
Child labour is born out of a lack of access to educational facilities and bad economic conditions of families. Due to unemployment and poor economic conditions, people are forced to take up lower-wage jobs. There is increased migration of people from rural to urban areas, which hampers the quality of workforce and labour in the villages.
There is a gender bias within educational facilities in rural India. Access to education in India faces a lot of challenges. Households in rural India do not give priority and importance to girl children, though this sometimes happens in urban areas as well. They prefer a male child, as he would take the family name to the next generation.
Girls are treated merely as commodities of their in-laws’ house. Girls face the challenge of being treated as a liability and a burden for their parents. In rural areas, people have the mindset that there is no point in teaching girls as they have to leave the house someday, and they will not be able to contribute to the economic needs of their house.
There is a restrictive environment for girls in a village. She is curbed from voicing her opinion, asked to avoid conversations with other men, behave well, and learn household work at an early age so that she can be a perfect wife after she is married off. The ideal character and behavior of a girl in a rural area in India is set to be laid out by society as a whole. Society is so dominant that it can mark one girl godly and the other with a loose character. It is said that ‘when you teach a girl, you teach a family’, but India seems to be losing this opportunity and continues to focus on gender roles set by society.
One of the main challenges faced by a girl child in rural areas is increasing rates of dropouts. Families focus more on household and traditional activities for girls. Increased participation in household activities leads to girls spending more time inside the homes. Financial constraint of a family is also a big reason for the dropout of girls.
Another reason why girls are more prone to drop out of school even before they reach their teens is taking care of their siblings in the household and child marriage. In urban areas and cities, despite the fact that girls are able to go to schools get an education, they are not motivated to get themselves employed. This is because of the pressure from households and in-laws and their presumed mindset that if she starts working, she will go out of control.
Sanitisation and availability of washrooms are is that common in rural areas, as the infrastructure is compromised. Once girls start having their menstrual cycles, they are curbed from going to schools due to safety reasons and lack of washroom facilities in schools. The availability of sanitary napkins is a mere possibility and it is presumed to be costly. The girl child is termed as a burden to a family, and households in rural India have the understanding that girls will be married off someday, so what is the use of making her study! It is just a waste of money.