The Silent Cycle Revolution Of Indian Schoolgirls (X image @amitabhk87)
School girls in India are leading a silent cycling revolution. In remote areas of the country, public transport facility can be very challenging. Reportedly, a number of Indian states are giving free bicycles to school-going girls, making their mobility easier.
A study done by Srishti Agarwal, Adit Seth, and Rahul Goel found that the notable rise in cycling among rural girls hiked two times from 4.5 percent in 2007, to 11 percent in 2017, reducing the gender gap in the activity, said BBC.
The researchers are from Delhi’s Indian Institute of Technology and Mumbai’s Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies concluded the study after analysing transport modes for school-going children aged 5-17 years from a nationwide education survey, looking at the effectiveness of state-run schemes that provide free bicycles to students and tested their influence on the cycling rate.
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The state-run free bicycle distribution in India began in 2004, and have targeted girls with higher school dropout rates than boys due to household chores and long walks which could be exhausting.
“This is a silent revolution. We call it a revolution because cycling levels increased among girls in a country which has high levels of gender inequality in terms of female mobility outside the home, in general, and for cycling, in particular”, BBC quoted Agarwal as saying.
On national level, the percentage of all students who are cycling to school rose from 6.6 percent in 2007 to 11.2 percent in 2017, as per the study.
While cycling to school doubled over the decade in rural areas, it remained steady in urban areas. The cycling revolution is most substantial in villages of states like Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, and Chhattisgarh. States like these have populations comparable to some of the largest European countries.
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This cycling approach is not only common in India. Countries like Columbia, Kenya, Malawi, and Zimbabwe also shows that bicycles effectively boost girls’ school enrolment and retention. However, the scale in India is unmatched.
Reportedly, only 20% of those travelling to work outside home reported cycling as their main mode of transport. But people in villages cycled more (21%) than in the cities (17%). Also, more working men (21.7%) than their female counterparts (4.7%) cycled to work. “Compared to international settings, this level of gender gap in cycling is among the highest in the world,” said Agrawal.
