Nine-year-old Shaiba Parveen of Topsia, Kolkata, sat inside her ramshackle hut recently ravaged by Cyclone Amphan, waiting to go back to he...
Nine-year-old Shaiba Parveen of Topsia, Kolkata, sat inside her ramshackle hut recently ravaged by Cyclone Amphan, waiting to go back to her school. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she told us the name of her school with an excited squeal: “Topsia Friends Society. I used to go there every day to study, meet my friends.”
Shaiba hasn’t gone to school since the lockdown. Her parents are daily-wage labourers who have had a tough time feeding their family of four since March, their finances first ravaged by the Covid-19 induced lockdown, thereafter by Cyclone Amphan. The sole mobile phone in the family is taken by Shaiba’s brother, when he goes to work. So all the nine-year-old can do is wait that school begins soon, else she might be married off and have to bid goodbye to education forever.
The aftermath of Covid-19 in education has been talked about a lot of us working in the sector. Research by several groups including ours have found that children like Shaiba are likely to be the worst-affected demographic: girls in pre-teens in families that can ill-afford to feed them, who are likely to be whisked away from school towards domestic care work at home, or marriage,...
