It doesn’t make headline news. but evidence is emerging that the shutdown of all pre-primary and K-12 schools countrywide for over 15 months for fear of children being infected by the novel Coronavirus, is likely to blight the future of tens of millions of India’s children, especially the girl child.

According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5 2019-20, enrolment of girl children in rural secondaries has dropped sharply in 18 states across the country. As a result attainment of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of ‘gender equality to empower all women and girls’ by 2030 is in high jeopardy. Ironically, in Gujarat where Narendra Modi was chief minister from 2001-14, prior to being elevated to the office of prime minister, the proportion of girl children in rural higher secondary education (classes XI-XII) has plunged to 29.2 percent from 97 percent enroled in primary school (2019-20).

A January 2021 report by the Delhi-based RTE Forum estimates that since March 2020, when all 1.6 million schools countrywide were ordered to shut down, 10 million girl children have dropped out of secondary education. It warns that India’s stringent closure of schools has “disproportionately impacted girls by putting them at risk of early marriage, early pregnancy, poverty, trafficking and violence”.

The sharp increase in the number of girl children in rural India, which ungraciously hosts 65.5 percent of the country’s 1.35 billion population, dropping out — or being forced to drop out — of school is likely to adversely impact the country’s female labour force participation (FLFP), a marker of economic development. According to World Bank data in marked contrast to OECD countries where FLFP averages 54 percent, India’s FLFP was 20.3 percent in 2020, lower than of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

One of the few positive developments in Indian education in the new millennium is general acceptance that girl children are entitled to primary-secondary education. Even partly educated women marry in adult age, bear fewer and healthier children, and are likely to participate in the formal labour market and boost household incomes.

NHFS-5 data indicates that a rising number of rural girl children were dropping out of school even before the Covid-19 pandemic struck India. This situation is likely to go from bad to worse following the extended closure of education institutions countrywide. Indeed there’s a clear and present danger that a substantial proportion of gains of post-independence India’s women’s emancipation movement will be lost.
According to an ancient Chinese proverb, women hold up half the sky. The trend lines of NHFS and declining FLFP require the urgent attention of government, policy planners and educators countrywide, if the national aspiration to transform India into a $5 trillion economy by 2024 is not to become a pipedream.