When better roads bring better marriage proposals

RAJASTHAN: What do better roads mean to the common man? Better connectivity, access to more facilities? For the people of Thooni Ahiran, a small village about 45 km from Jaipur, better roads mean more than that. It means getting better marriage proposals for their girls from city bred men!

Someone visiting this village - whose fields bear rich crops of bajra, moong, sesame and jowar - about a year back and today would have two totally different experiences.

Although situated only about five km from the national highway, travelling to the village, thanks to its terrible mud roads like in most other villages, was a nightmare.

Not only was an outsider oblivious of its mere presence because it was so cut off from the city, even those inhabiting the village found the poor connectivity responsible for many of their woes.

The children couldn't walk to school especially in the monsoons and hence dropped out, the maternal and infant mortality rates were high because the patient couldn't be rushed to the hospital on time and dairy farmers often suffered losses as they had to walk all the way to the highway with their canisters of milk.

But an initiative under the Rural Road Project, a part of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) directly monitored by the office of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to build an all-weather road two years back, brought big relief to the villagers.

The project, which is supported and funded by the World Bank, was completed last year and the villagers are slowly beginning to feel the changes.

The most interesting change, perhaps, would be the smiling ladies' declaration that now the girls of the village get better proposals.

"Earlier because of the bad roads, we didn't want to marry off our daughters to far off places otherwise we would probably never see them often, if at all. But after the roads were made, there is better connectivity with the city.

"To add to that our daughters are literate as well. Hence we have started getting better proposals for them. Men who have stable jobs now want to marry our girls," Satnarayan Lodha said.

"We can now choose better husbands for our girls. Their husband needn't be just farmers whose income is unreliable.

"My eldest daughter, for instance, is married to a man who owns an electronics shop in Jaipur. Other than being assured that her life will be stable, we also have the pleasure of visiting her or she coming to see us every fortnight or so," said Patwari Lal.

"The opposite is true as well," added Janki Devi, whose daughter-in-law is from Gangapur, a small town.

"Girls from towns and the city don't mind getting married to our boys in the village because they now know that they will not be stuck here forever!" she laughed.

Jai Prakash Goswami, headmaster of a primary school in Swami Ka Bas, another small village about a kilometre from Thooni Aahiran, said that better roads have managed to boost the enrolment rate of the school as well, more so in case of the girls.

"There has been a 20 percent increase in the enrolment rate in the school over the past one year," Goswami said.

And the good news is that nearly 60 percent of the students are girls.

"There are more girls in the school than boys," he said. After completing their tenure in the school, which is till Class 8, the children go on to complete their higher studies in the nearby town called Chaksu, about seven km from the village.

Amid all the positive development, one can't help notice that there is still a long way to go when it comes to changing people's mindsets.

"After completing my Class 8, I didn't go to school any more. I got married about a year back," said a shy Kisna, barely 16-years-old.

Kehanta, dressed in a green salwar and only 12, hovered nearby. She is already engaged to a boy, almost her own age.

"At least they have started sending their girls to school now. It will take some more time in order for them to understand that girls shouldn't be married off so early," said Rampyari, the Anganwadi worker at the nearby health centre catering to the village.