Khushboo’s
dream is to become a pilot, a ‘plane udaane
waali’ as she calls it. Her eyes lit up everytime she sees a plane flying
by. She’s amazed by the way it flies, and wants to drive it. I ask her about
school and she looks at her mother. A domestic help working in 3-4 houses,
Geetha is all of 23 years. ‘Bachche ko
school kaise bhejein?’ she asks. Geetha
is married with three children. Her husband, who rides a cycle rickshaw for
daily living, earns around Rs 200 everyday. She earns around Rs 2000 at the end
of every month. With less than Rs 10,000 as monthly income, it has become
impossible for the family to have even a hand-to-mouth existence. As part of
the money goes to their extended family back in Bihar, there’s little left to
ensure that Khushboo attends school.
Khushboo whiles away her time during the day,
near a temple. Kids of her age look greedily at the temple gate as devotees
make a beeline for doing some charity work. With sweets and other eatables in
hand, the followers of deities hope to attain moksha by giving food to the poor. The kids flock around the philanthropists,
while Khushboo stands in a corner. Ask her why she doesn’t follow her friends
to get the sweets, she says, ‘Mummy
maaregi’. An NGO-run school in the same locality refuses to enrol her as a
student, because of increasing number of students and lesser space.
The eyes that haven’t even seen a school gate,
the ears that haven’t heard the school bell ringing, the mouth that hasn’t said
the line ‘Good morning, teacher!’, the legs that haven’t run around on a school
ground, the hands that haven’t held a school textbook, Khushboo may not even be
able to dream of a school life. Acts like RTE (Right to Education) have done
little to ensure that children like Khushboo get access to education. With the
much-hyped developmental programmes of a growing economy like India, it is
important to remember that the country will go nowhere when the most little of
its citizens can never hope for a better future.
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