"Dare to Learn" Chapter 6: Anjeli, India

“Dare to Learn: The Power of an Educated Girl” features 25 original essays from young women around the world on their fight to go to school.

In her chapter from Assembly’s new book, “Dare to Learn: The Power of an Educated Girl,” Anjeli writes about life and education in Assam, where she now works to help out-of-school girls on her tea plantation reenrol in school.

I live on a tea plantation in Assam, India’s largest tea producing state. I love the greenery and scenic beauty of the tea plantations. There is so much lush greenery here and you can always see women in the fields plucking tea leaves. I love that beauty.

Most of my community lives and works on the tea plantations. They work for minimum wage, which is about Rs 167 per day. I see mothers struggle to support their families with that wage. Many of the people who work on the plantations aren’t very educated. Despite that, a lot of their earnings go towards educating their children. 

That’s the case for my family. My mother and elder sister both work in the tea plantations, and the responsibility to provide for our family rests on their shoulders. My father died when I was very young. After he passed away, my mother needed my elder sister to stay at home to look after my two brothers and I, so she has never been to school. But she works hard to ensure that we are able to go to school. My elder brother studied up to eighth grade before getting married and beginning work as a daily wage earner. My younger brother is currently studying in eighth grade.

Every day my elder sister tells me how important it is that I study and continue my education. She knows the value of education because she was denied it. Her words always inspire me to continue my studies. My mother is also an inspiration. It’s a daily struggle to ensure she can support our education. Even though my sister couldn’t be educated, our mother makes sure that my brothers and I are sent to school.

A lot of families don’t support their children equally, the way my family does. I see a lot of inequality between girls and boys in terms of opportunities. Boys have all the opportunities. Parents think that when they grow old, their sons will be the ones who will look after them. So, they think it’s important to take care of their sons and give them more love and opportunities. Parents don’t want to invest in their daughters because they believe that their daughters will eventually go live with another family after marriage and look after her in-laws instead. 

There’s also a lot of suspicion around girls and their activities. This is the reason girls are given less freedom than boys. Boys are never asked questions like ‘Where were you?’ or ‘Where did you go?’, but if a girl comes home late, people ask her a lot of questions. 

Due to such inequality in our community, girls are much more likely to drop out of school. There are a lot of reasons why that happens. One of the reasons is that the tea plantation companies give employees housing benefits, but only to those who work for them permanently. So if your family member who works at the plantation dies, your family loses their housing unless someone else from your family takes their place. Often that responsibility to ensure the family can continue staying in the same house falls on the girl. The girl has to quit school and take up a permanent job at the plantation. 

Girls are always seen as a source of income. So if there are financial issues in the family, to fill that financial gap, girls have to leave school and start working. Sometimes if a girl is going to school, the cost of buying her books and other school supplies becomes too much of a challenge when her family is already pressed for money. 

Finally, the middle school and high school are not near the plantation where I live. It takes very long to reach those, which forces girls to drop out. It’s even harder to get there during the rainy season, so girls miss classes, which eventually forces them to drop out. It can also be unsafe for girls to walk that far all alone. At every stage, it feels like girls are forced to drop out. When I was younger, I didn’t really understand what school was all about. I went to school to play with my friends and eat together, before returning home. My earliest memories of school aren’t of lessons but of the social aspects. As I got older, I realized that school is so much more than that. My teachers taught me right from wrong and made sure I had the capabilities and capacities to achieve my dreams. They prepared me for a life outside of the tea plantations and in a career of my choosing.

After I finished middle school, I was promoted to high school. In the beginning, I made many new friends. It was amazing to have friends because the journey to high school was over 3 km each way, which is far and scary if you’re by yourself. My new friends and I would walk to school together and come home together, so none of us had to be alone. But after a while, all of them got bicycles and left me behind. I’d watch them as they rode away, while I continued to walk because my family could not afford one for me. Walking 6 km for school every day is a challenge. It was even more of a challenge during the rainy season because I didn’t have an umbrella. My uniform would get soaking wet in the rain, not to mention incredibly muddy and dirty. I was also teased by my peers at school because of that. I was always scared while walking alone because daily wage workers would call out to me and tease me. Often I would have to miss class because I wasn’t able to get to school and my performance suffered. I was falling behind in maths because I couldn’t attend that class regularly. 

My life changed in tenth grade when my mother bought me a bicycle with the money she had saved. She knew the challenges I was facing in getting to school. She was aware that spending so much time and energy walking every day was affecting my grades. With my bicycle, I was not only able to attend my classes but also special study sessions for my exams regularly, and perform better in school. I was able to rejoin my classmates in their journey to school and make friends again. 

After tenth grade, I started attending Lakhimpur National Academy, which is 7 km away from my home. As the school is so far, I can’t ride my cycle anymore but instead need to take an auto. My auto fare costs Rs 60 each day. My mother gives me Rs 700 each month for my commute, which isn’t enough. So, every month I have to miss classes when I don’t have enough money. The issue here is that my mother thinks the commute costs are about Rs 30 each day and I don’t want to correct her. She already has a lot of burden, and she works so hard to give me the Rs 700 each month. I don’t want to ask her for more than that. I feel horrible when I have to miss class, because being absent for even one day is a big loss for me; but I know this is the best my family can do for me right now. 

Despite the challenges in getting to school, it’s worth it once I get there. Lakhimpur National Academy is an amazing place. My teachers are incredible. They’re so good at explaining their subjects. When students have trouble understanding a concept, our teachers don’t move on. They continue explaining until they’re sure we understand it. I’ve also finally been able to make good friends. Whenever I have to miss class because I can’t afford to get there, my friends take notes for me and share it with me the next day. My teachers also phone me if I miss school to find out why I wasn’t in class and tell me what lessons I missed. I love this relationship between students and teachers. 

Before I started attending Lakhimpur National Academy, I didn’t even know what grammar was. But now that I’m studying here, I have started learning grammar and English grammar specifically. I have since learned some English words, and it’s the subject I score the highest marks in! I have also been able to compete in sports since I started attending the academy and have also stood first in a quiz competition. It was the best feeling in the world when my teacher was congratulating me on my victory. 

Another thing about my life that has changed is that I have joined the Purva Bharati Educational Trust (PBET), which is a Malala Fund-supported organization that supports girls and women in my community. PBET called my brother one day and told him that they were looking for girls like me to be education promoters and talk to girls who had dropped out of school about why it’s important to continue their education. My brother told me about PBET, and said I should join them and that I would be great for this opportunity.

I attended a meeting for PBET education promoters and learned more about what I could do to support girls’ education in my tea plantation. I knew I wanted to join and help other girls learn like I have. As an education promoter, one project I worked on was a survey to figure out how many girls were going to school in my community and how many had dropped out. I spoke to the girls who had dropped out to find out their reasons and explained how they can re-enroll in school. I spoke to girls who did go to school and found out if they’re attending class regularly. PBET used the information from my survey to ensure they’re addressing the barriers to education that affect girls the most.

Another part of my work with PBET is painting wall murals with messages about the importance of girls’ education. The art raises awareness amongst girls and also their parents about why going to school is so important and starts important conversations. I also meet with girls and their parents together to encourage them to send their daughters to school. I tell them how education empowers girls and gives them a sense of what is right and what is wrong. It allows girls to not only pursue their parents’ dreams, but their own dreams as well and also bring development and progress to the plantation. As an education promoter, I receive a small stipend, which I’m using to pay for my commute so that I can attend school regularly. 

I’m doing as much as I can to ensure that other girls in my community can also go to school, but the government needs to intervene as well. The government should build secondary schools and higher secondary schools within the plantations also, so that students—especially girls—can continue their studies. There would be so many more girls attending school if they didn’t have commute costs and didn’t face so many challenges just to get to school. Girls would then also be able to attend school regularly, even during the rainy season. Even if they don’t have any friends to go with, they wouldn’t be afraid of travelling to school alone if it was nearby. 

Earlier, I wanted to secure a government job when I grew up, so that I can provide for my family and secure our future. Perhaps in the railway department. However, ever since I became an education promoter, my mother has been observing me helping other girls continue their education. She now tells me that I should become a teacher instead. She feels if I get a job in the railway department, it will of course secure our family’s future. But if I become a teacher, I can help many more girls get an education and secure their own family’s future. My mother believes that as a teacher I’ll be able to bring a large-scale change in my community. She says that one day my name will be known not only in our community in Assam, but all across India.