Safeena Husain, 54, was with a gaggle of youngsters celebrating a studying milestone in a small village outdoors Udaipur, Rajasthan, when she requested certainly one of them why her training had been interrupted. The lady had handed her Class X with Pragati, a second probability programme provided by Husain’s award-winning non-profit Educate Women. Pragati was designed for older women who’re ineligible for formal education. “I’m 18,” she instructed Husain. “I left training 10 years in the past once I was married.”

Husain simply gained the celebrated Ramon Magsaysay Award (the primary for an Indian organisation) for her almost two decade previous labour of affection. She nearly didn’t reply the frantic messages she obtained from an unknown Philippines quantity on a current Sunday, asking for “some information and knowledge”, as a result of “I assumed it was a fraud”.

Husain empathises with the youthful girl’s battle as a result of at present she is a kind of uncommon people who find themselves in a position to channel their childhood trauma to remodel society. Now in celebration mode, she would moderately not speak concerning the troublesome days, saying solely that it was a “very turbulent” childhood in Delhi. College was at all times her “place of happiness” and the place she felt secure. “Strolling residence from the bus cease was at all times the hardest time of day for me,” she says.

Paradigm shift

Husain’s training was interrupted for 3 years after Class XII. “Everyone provides up on you, they are saying ‘marry her off’, there’s a divorcee with 4 youngsters…” She grappled with that traditional triumvirate of guilt, disgrace, failure till an aunt, a buddy from Lucknow College the place her interfaith dad and mom met and fell in love, took her residence to dwell along with her and altered her life. “She gave me loads of love, affection and the motivation to return to training.” Husain finally graduated with a level in economics historical past from the London College of Economics. “I nonetheless keep in mind standing on Houghton Avenue,” she says, referring to the college’s location. “The best way I noticed myself shifted that day and the way the world noticed me shifted that day.” Schooling remodeled her life and she or he needs all women to know that feeling.

Most ladies know training is the one option to get forward, Husain says. Like the lady who accomplished her education almost twenty years after she left faculty — and in the identical 12 months as her son, scoring greater than him. Or the Bhil women who’re the primary of their households to get a proper training. And the younger girl who left a foul marriage and doesn’t wish to unload greens at 3 a.m. for the remainder of her life.

Husain got here again to India in 2005 and began Educate Women two years later. The non-profit works in about 30,000 villages (primarily in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh). “We’ve got introduced over two million women again into faculty,” she says. “An equal quantity have gone by means of our studying programme, which is the foundational literacy and numeracy programme.”

Push for second probabilities

Some 30,000 women have graduated from the Pragati programme. “Proper now loads of vitality goes into increasing the second probability programme and likewise taking it to different states,” Husain says. “As a result of that’s an enormous downside, way more rampant than elementary faculty points for out-of-school women.”

Societal and systemic points can weave an impenetrable wall round women, forcing them to drop out after the eighth grade. Marriage, family duties and mobility restrictions all develop into obstacles to additional training. “For each 100 main colleges, you have got 40 center colleges, and 24 secondary colleges, which implies the gap to high school will increase and entry drops off,” Husain provides.

Those that do keep, face loads of strain. “I see loads of women method secondary faculty with an infinite quantity of worry. They’ve this sword hanging over the pinnacle with their dad and mom saying. ‘I’m sending you however in case you fail, I’m going to make you sit at residence or get you married off’,” she says. “It results in loads of anxiousness.”

Husain works with state governments and says she’s seen large adjustments in twenty years — from separate bathrooms for women to even a marketing campaign comparable to ‘Beti Bachao’ that acknowledges there’s a downside. “You already know, the correct to training got here after we began work,” she says. “So I’ve seen the battle, however I’ve additionally seen how quickly progress has occurred. I believe one should acknowledge that as nicely as a result of that’s the one factor that offers you hope to proceed.” Rajasthan’s complete free secondary training programme for women has additionally been a recreation changer.

Husain’s additionally seen attitudes come full circle. One father who, a few years in the past, was in opposition to sending his daughter to high school not too long ago instructed her: “You must educate women. The world is constructed for the educated and if we’re not educated, we shall be exploited like animals.”

Household issues

Like her dad and mom, Husain had an interfaith marriage. She met director Hansal Mehta when she organised a Bollywood dinner for creator and Booker Prize winner Daisy Rockwell in Berkeley College. Her father Yusuf, who ran a journey firm, was by then an actor in Hindi cinema, and related her to her favorite director whose 2000 movie Dil Pe Mat Le Yaar she had liked.

“We’ve simply been collectively since,” she says. “It was a kind of issues, you meet and you understand it’s meant to be.” The couple lived collectively for years and have two daughters, finally solely marrying in 2022. “Shedding my father throughout COVID was an enormous second,” she says. “It made us really feel like we wanted to do one thing extra affirmative for ourselves and for our youngsters.”

Her daughters navigate their dad and mom’ very completely different worlds adroitly. When she was driving by means of Uttar Pradesh a few years in the past with certainly one of her daughters, they noticed a line of women carrying firewood and strolling in a single file on the freeway. Her daughter instantly piped up: “Why isn’t Educate Women serving to them?”

The author is a Bengaluru-based journalist and the co-founder of India Love Venture on Instagram.

Printed – September 03, 2025 07:35 pm IST