Fellow Presentation: Day 4 (Durga Pandey)

Durga Pandey has refocused his project on communicating the value of education to families in India. Starting from the premise that education is the key to all development projects, Durga asked himself why the projects to improve primary education in India haven't been more effective. He concluded that the efforts are being undercut: by the teachers (some of whom show up at the school only on payday); by the government (which doesn't always recognize the way that programs must be tailored to accommodate differences in the states); but, most of all, by the parents. Millions of parents are illiterate (44.2% of adult population) and so they don't appreciate the importance of sending their own child to school. Instead, they see immediate costs:

1. Loss of the child's wages (many start working as young as age 3)
   
2. Cost of school books and uniforms (students may be send home if not in uniform)
   
3. Cultural risk of educating girls who might try to escape their traditional roles
   

And there are not visible benefits that offset these costs.

As a result, there is no pressure from the parents to attend school, nor are there alternative learning opportunities in the home.

Since Durga has started down this track only recently, the project plan stage was more of an open discussion: people suggested that perhaps the value of education could be communicated by tying it to one of the two things that people really care about: Bollywood movies and cricket.

Durga did note that the picture is not entirely bleak: literacy rates over the decade from 1991 to 2001 improved from 52% to 65%, the largest increase of any decade in the 20th century.

[Apology to Durga: This summary is somewhat less thorough than others. As the designated photographer for the session, I found that my notes suffered...]