What’s the connection between a cycle and the education statistics of a state? Ask Pune-based Armene Modi who shows how the link works, says Huned Contractor

If it were not for the humble bicycle, Balutai Shinde, Jyoti Bhalerao, Archana Pachange and many other teenage girls of a village called Nimgaon Bhogi, located about 70 kilometres from Pune in Maharashtra, would never have dreamt of going to school. “By now, my parents would have been more concerned about finding a suitable match for me. Instead, they are now convinced that marriage can wait and that I must first complete my graduation,” says Jyoti.

There are close to 600 such girls in this part of Western Maharashtra, in the age group of 11 to 18, whose education has become a reality rather than an unfulfilled wish, only because they have been able to cycle to school, or even college. And this has been made possible by Pune-based Armene Modi who has provided these cycles through her NGO called Ashta No Kai. “It is a Japanese word that means working towards a brighter future,” Modi says.

Modi is a Columbia University-educated English teacher who teaches the subject in colleges across Japan. In 1996, when she read ‘May You Be The Mother Of A 100 Sons’ written by Elisabeth Bumiller, a reporter of ‘Washington Post’, she was stunned by the grim statistics – according to a 1991 census, 61 percent of Indian women were illiterate. Modi, who was then an English professor at the J F Oberlin University in Tokyo, quit her job and returned home to Pune to set up a women’s literacy project. This was in 1998.

“When I first visited the villages more than a decade ago, I saw girls who had been married off at very early ages and were now tending to fields and struggling to take care of their homes and children. I was moved to do something to change the situation –therefore started ‘kishori mandals’ (groups for teenage girls) and set up Self Help Groups so that women would be able to save money and use it to become entrepreneurs,” she says.

When an appeal in local newspapers for cycles, in 1998, brought forth a reasonable response, Modi started a ‘bicycle bank’ to reach out to those young girls who had decided to opt out of schools because they had no means of reaching them. Her Japanese friends also donated 100 cycles.

This has helped many girls clear their SSC examination. “Most girls were forced to leave their education mid-way because they had to walk up to 10 km to attend schools in neighbouring towns that offered secondary level and higher education. Parents were, but naturally, concerned for their safety and therefore would rather get them married off at early ages rather than put the girls at risk in the process of securing education and special skills,” Modi explains.

Enthused by the success of this project, Modi announced scholarships for those girls wanting to pursue higher education. There were nine applications in 2004. These went on increasing, so much so that in 2008, Modi was able to secure 57 scholarships for girls wishing to study for professional degrees. The number has been increasing steadily over the past three years too. “This includes a girl who wants to become an automobile engineer,” she says.

According to a survey, 38 per cent of girls in rural Maharashtra drop out of school after reaching Class IV because of the need to help with household chores and also because any further education is deemed unnecessary and unaffordable. “I was encouraged to start the bicycle bank because many mothers told me that they wouldn’t mind their daughters studying further provided they had the means to reliable transport and didn’t have to spend long hours walking to and back from school,” Modi says.

To be able to make the girls responsible for the bicycles, each user has to deposit Rs 150, which is refunded after she finishes her SSC examination. This is also to ensure that other members of the household don’t start misusing the bicycle to run their personal errands. There are, as of now, about 300 bicycles in use.

Placing this need for educating the girl child into a larger picture, Modi says, “A girl who has not even completed her primary education is apt to forget whatever she has learned once she gets married. Such women therefore lapse into illiteracy. We found this while running literacy classes for women where many of them said they had gone to school but had then forgotten to read, write or count because they had dropped out an early age. But this does not happen if a girl studies at least up to SSC.” As for the funding of such a project, Modi reveals that the bicycles are mostly sponsored by corporate companies or individuals. “Fortunately, a bicycle lasts for a long time,” she says.

So does education.

by huned contractor