Whenever I see bright-eyed, cheerful young girls wearing colourful ribbons in their neatly tied up hair in villages and small towns, it gives me a high and brings a smile to my face. And if those girls are wearing uniforms and riding bicycles to school, the sight brings a level of joy that I can’t translate into words. It sketches a future vision of an India which is vibrant, prosperous, equitable, and where one half of its population is getting an opportunity at education. It may not be in the best of schools, but any chance to get away from the drudgery of household chores at a tender age, just because you’re a girl, and sit in a classroom, has to be celebrated.
As ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) chief V Narayanan reiterated at the recent Lead25 Conclave in Chennai, our education system, even in villages and local languages, is not bad. He himself had studied in a Tamil medium school in a small place in Tamil Nadu, and come this far… to lead a world-class space research organisation as ISRO. Sridhar Vembu of Zoho fame, currently being celebrated in the social media for developing the Arattai app, which hopes to become a made-in-India alternative to global messaging apps like WhatsApp, never went to a fancy school. He told me in an interview in 2013 that he was the son of a stenographer, studied in Tamil medium, and was the first from his school to get into IIT Madras.
Returning to schoolgirls, I came away with my batteries recharged from a trip to a school in the small town of Authoor, near Tuticorin (Thoothukudi) in Tamil Nadu, where a session of the popular Project Punch, initiated by PDG V R Muthu, RID 3212, was taking place. Here both boys and girls are trained in spoken English; I attended a valedictory session and interacted with girls who had attended the three-day course. As they came forward to speak in English, what grabbed my attention was their self-confidence; they might be rattling away something they had learnt by-heart, the grammar and the tense might not have been perfect, but they were able to hold a simple conversation in English. Those of us privileged enough to get educated in the best missionary schools and colleges in India, or other plush private educational institutions affordable only to the elite, can barely understand the aspirations of parents that their children should be able to speak in English. As PDG Muthu points out in the cover story (Pg 12) schoolchildren even in the smaller towns of Tamil Nadu know English, and can write in it, “but their skills in spoken English are either poor or non-existent”. As parents consider it a matter of prestige that their children be able to converse in English, he launched this project. His company Idhayam Oils sponsors the sessions conducted by professional trainers and the transformation this training brings in the children’s English-speaking capability is striking.
The project covers both boys and girls, and is making waves across Tamil Nadu, and requests have come in for replication in other states too. Such Rotary service projects that give flight to the dreams of the young need to be celebrated… and we have done just that in this issue!
Rasheeda Bhagat