[ad_1]
Associated Press
Rural girls walk on bicycles they received from school in West Bengal
Nibha Kumari, a resident of Bihar, India’s poorest state, remembers how a bicycle changed her life when she was 15 years old.
For two years, he rode two hours a day, six days a week, from home to school and tutorial classes, using a bicycle provided by the state government.
“If I didn’t have a bike, I don’t think I would have finished high school. It has changed my life,” says Nibha, now 27.
The daughter of a farmer in Begusarai district of Nibha city is sent to her aunt’s house 10 km away to attend a nearby primary school. Transportation is a challenge for girls and public transport is unreliable.
When Nibha returned to her hometown to attend high school, she rode her bicycle through the village’s rugged roads to continue her studies.
“Girls have gained a lot of confidence since they started riding bicycles to go to school and tuition classes. More and more of them are going to school now. Most of them have free bicycles,” said Bhuvaneshwari Kumari, a health worker in Begusarai.
Getty Images
Several Indian states are offering free bicycles to school-going girls to boost female enrolment
You are right. A new peer-reviewed study published in the journal ScienceDirect reveals deep insights into schoolchildren and cycling in rural India.
The study by Srishti Agrawal, Adit Seth and Rahul Goel found that the most significant growth in cycling in India was among rural girls, which more than tripled from 4.5% in 2007 to 11% in 2017, narrowing the gender gap in India.
“It is a silent revolution. We call it a revolution because in a country where there is a huge gender inequality in women’s mobility, there has been an improvement in cycling among girls, especially on bicycles,” Ms Agrawal said.
Since 2004, state free bicycle distribution programs have been targeting girls, who drop out of school at higher rates than boys due to domestic chores and long, arduous walks. This approach is not unique to India — evidence from countries such as Colombia, Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe also shows that bicycles are effective in improving girls’ enrolment and retention. But the scale here is unparalleled.
Three researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai, analysed transport patterns of school children aged 5 to 17 years based on the National Education Survey, examined the effectiveness of national programmes that provided free bicycles to students and tested their impact on cycling rates.
Getty Images
Tamil Nadu was one of the first states to provide bicycles to school-going girls.
They found that nationally, the proportion of students riding bicycles to school increased from 6.6 per cent in 2007 to 11.2 per cent in 2017.
The number of people cycling to school has doubled in rural areas over the past decade, while it has remained stable in urban areas. Indian cities have notoriously unsafe roads and low numbers of people cycling to school in cities are linked to poor traffic safety and more cars on the roads.
India’s bicycle revolution is most pronounced in rural areas, with states such as Bihar, West Bengal, Assam and Chhattisgarh leading the growth. These states have populations comparable to some of the largest European countries. Studies have found that cycling is more common in rural areas than in urban areas.
Cycling in India was not reported for the first time until the last census in 2011. Only 20% of commuters say cycling is their main mode of transport. But people in towns (21%) cycle more than those in cities (17%).
In addition, more male workers (21.7%) cycle to work than female workers (4.7%). “Compared to the international context, the gender gap in cycling is the highest in the world,” said Ms Agrawal.
Getty Images
In rural Bihar, almost no girls rode bicycles to school in 2007 – a level that rose to more than 13% in a decade.
The American suffragette Susan B Anthony once famously said that the bicycle “has done more to liberate woman than anything else in the world.” “It has given her a sense of freedom and self-sufficiency.”
The researchers wanted to know if women would cycle less as they age, due to fewer job opportunities and exiting the workforce. Nibha stopped cycling after she got married and moved in with her in-laws. Although she still commuted from home while training to be a teacher, when asked about her commute, she simply said, “I don’t need a bike anymore.”
[ad_2]
Source link
