[Reader-list] delayed second post!

[rinchin etc]

I probably need to start by apologising for missing my second posting and
being late on the third .

While my study is progressing well, I feel a certain sense of diffidence in
putting up a posting when my own understanding of the study and what will
come out of it is slowly evolving and things seem too "in parts" to
put up. I keep wondering what will anyone make out of one odd transcribed
interview. Since narratives don't always flow from beginning to end,
'Somewhere in the middle' seems to be a strange point to introduce an issue.

My study involves looking at girl's education in Haat Pipaliya town though a
biographic narrative of Soni Bua or James madam as she is known. This to be
placed in the context of the town and the changes that it has gone through.

This process of interaction has taught me many things. One, that the past is
not always easy to get out neutrally. Its always coloured by the present and
the present always overwhelms. One has to keep nudging oneself and the
people one is talking to, to look back. There is always so much in the
present to talk about. While I transcribe my interviews this becomes very
apparent. The only persons who are comfortable with the past are Soni bua,
(the 90 year old protagonist of the study), and her husband.

Second, how difficult it is to reach women. With Soni James and her family
its been easy. Her family has a strong army of women who work. One of her
daughters is the principal of the govt. girls school and the other is the
principal of the mission school and its easy to trace their educational and
work lives. But even through them the next sources of information about the
town and its educational institutions are always men. (through them we try
to trace girls education!). My tape recording of conversations with people
around town are full of male voices… gate keepers!

Another question that keeps coming up - when one is trying to trace
something that is common to a whole town, one is never quite sure when the
information is completely verified. Different groups have different
versions. There are things about the school that I had learnt in my earlier
interactions in the town that had attracted me, made me take up the study.
But apart from my earlier sources I find very little public memory to bring
out those facts. That is a finding but it also breaks my easy preconceived
charting of a narrative. I guess thats the difference between documentation
and research. To understand, what the school and its values, meant to the
town in the past; the kind of impact it had and what it means to the town
now, is a very non linear and multifaceted narrative.

This post attempts a sketchy bit about the schools in the town, and their
inter-linkage with community and caste politics. In the next post that will
follow, I am putting an extract of an interview with a dalit family.
Besides touching on caste inter-linkages themselves, the discussion also
reflects the change in the way people perceive education and how issues of
access have changed.

The town now has over 25 schools - five government and the rest
private. Three schools are exclusively for girls and the others are
co-educational. Many of the earlier schools were based on community
affiliations like the Jain school, the Patidaar school etc. A new one called
Sraswati Sishu Mandir, run by the local RSS branch has recently been added
to the list. The mission school, which is the oldest private school and had
a special focus on girls and dalit children is called the "massih logon ka
school".  But over the years the profile of students in all the schools has
changed and become a heterogonous mix of communities primarily guided by
'quality' (read economics). The names of the institutions come from the
trusts that run them rather than the student profile.

"They are like all other private schools. If they are good and people can
afford the fees then they will send their children there. When Saraswati
sishu mandir started, we were told that they took only hindu students, no
dalits, muslim or christians. But now they can't even afford to have an all
hindu staff. 80% of their teachers are dalit. With the kind of remuneration
that private schools give, they cannot afford to be choosy in staff, so now
its open for all children." Schools are about education and about economics
of running it. Ideology doesn't have much of a role to play in it. You have
to get good results, so that parents are willing to pay the high fees that
the school charges and one also has to pay teachers so that they stay. Where
is the role of politics here? It doesn't work" (as said by two government
school teachers who also run their own private schools.)

There are two junior colleges in the town, which have allowed for more girls
to be able to enroll. Even though the present ratio of girls in college is
just about 1/4th, Hemalata James, the principal of the girls middle school
tells us, "From all the girls that pass out from my school only 50% go to
high school, and from them only about 25% will go to college. Amongst them
too, if they get a job after 12th, they drop out. But still its an
improvement. In '69 when I went to this college we were only four girls."

"A lot has changed", she says. "But many things have remained the same. Even
today the most common job option for girls is teaching. Or may be some may
try for nursing. Its so because the courses are not so expensive and one can
do them after 12th."

"The change", she says "has come about in the number of girls getting into
such work and the boys are aspiring for higher levels.  While the girls are
going to college here, families try to send their boys to Indore."

It is apparent that ideology, social position, access and financial
considerations have a role to play in the process of acquiring education
though the priority given to each is different in different capsules of time
and are determined by the common social aspirations for boys and girls.
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