Women In Rajasthan's Barmer Take The Driver’s Seat With Maru Udan

Hailing from a remote village, Ramsar of Barmer district, 526 kms from Jaipur, 46-year-old Sarita Kanwar, draped in a Rajasthani poshak and always engrossed with household chores, had never imagined that she would drive a car one day. Despite owning a vehicle by her son, driving was a distant dream for her until a few months ago.

In November 2024, after participating in a skilled development course on driving under the Maru Udan program, an initiative of the Barmer district collector, Sarita learnt to drive and inspired several others. Now she not only drives a car and teaches others but also is readily available to ferry sick residents of her village to the nearest hospital.

“For me and women in our village, driving was supposed to be confined to men. Not only was the driving seen as a looked-down-upon profession for women, but also socially unacceptable as it would require one to remove the ghoonghat from the face. During 2021, during the second Covid-19 outbreak, there was a medical emergency in my neighbourhood, and a patient needed to be rushed to a nearby hospital, seven kilometres from our village. It took us many hours to wait for the arrival of my son and drive him. There was a car in the house, and had I known how to drive, I could have been of some help. This was the first time I realised learning to drive a car is a life-saving skill”, Sarita told Outlook.

“After participating in Maru Udan program, I was not only introduced to driving but also got a platform to learn other skills such as financial literacy, understanding mental health, menstrual hygiene sensitisation, and confidence-building sessions conducted by experts,” added Kanwar.

Kanwar is one of the 200 women who received a certified driving license after attending a driving and traffic rules course, and now she also trains this skill to women and girls (above 18) in her village.

The Maru Udan program was launched on November 12, 2024, by the Barmer's District Collector Tina Dabi, under the Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao (Save the Girl Child, Educate the Girl Child) scheme, which aims to address declining child sex ratios and issues related to women's empowerment. Launched by the Prime Minister on January 22, 2015, in Panipat, Haryana.

Activities under the Maru Udan program included block and district-level dialogues and special events, attracting over 4,000 women participants. To ensure effective implementation of the Beti Bachao-Beti Padhao scheme and optimal utilisation of the allocated budget, innovation was designed, emphasising women's health, education, self-employment, self-defence, and participation in confidence-building sessions conducted by experts.

Empowering Women Through Financial Literacy

Santosh Kumari, who runs a small fair price shop in her village, joined one of the trainings along with her daughter Pinky Kumari, a student of Rajki Kanya Mahavidhyalya Barmer.

“Before joining the workshop, my role in the shop was confined to only selling the products, and my husband, who works as a daily wage labourer, would take care of the finances. But after acquiring financial literacy skills, which also include money management and basic arithmetic skills, I was empowered to manage the financial part of my business.”

“Similarly, my daughter and several other young girls who participated in a similar workshop got a chance to participate in a career counselling session. Now she and her few friends have started to make soaps and millets from buffalo milk, the skills they learnt at the Maru Udaan Program, added Kumari, one of the 60 women in her block who participated in activities aiming to ensure in-depth discussions and problem-solving.

Bridging The Gap: From Women's Dreams To Reality

“After serving as a collector of Jaisalmer prior to taking the charge as a district collector of Barmer, I could sense that women in the faraway Thar region of Rajasthan require special attention and empowerment. Women here too dream and aspire but are far away from achieving their goals in reality,” Tina Dabi, Barmer district collector, told Outlook.

“In the given budget to each district under the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao initiative, we in Barmer ran the Maru Udaan program. The aim was to empower women and girls of this region with life skills, financial literacy, and awareness of new-age illnesses like cervical and breast cancer. With cases of suicides also rising in these districts, special attention was laid on the mental health of women and schoolchildren by giving them a platform to share their fears with a certified counsellor,” added Dabi, who personally visited several blocks such as Shiv, Gadara Road, Dhorimanna, and Ramsar to interact with women and counsel them.

Maru Udaan To Be A Pan Rajasthan initiative

Encouraged by the success of Maru Udan, the Women and Child Development Department now plans to roll out a state-wide campaign titled "Rajasthan Maru Udan”, an initiative to empower women economically, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Under the Beti Padhao, Beti Bachao initiative, each district is allocated a budget of ₹20 lakh, managed by a district task force headed by the District Collector.

The programs include mental and physical health, financial management, skill development and vocational training, awareness of government schemes and career counselling, breast cancer awareness, financial management workshops, domestic enterprise promotion seminars, women’s self-defence training, cybercrime prevention and digital literacy seminars, driving courses and traffic rule awareness, dialogues for the mental and emotional development of girls aged 9-12 years, agricultural income enhancement trainings, superfood production workshops, millet cookies training, and career counselling.

Barmer, Rajasthan's second-largest district in terms of area, had lagged in mainstream development due to its remote location and challenging geographical conditions. This resulted in limited educational outreach. As per the 2011 Census, Barmer's literacy rate was just 40.1 per cent, and the sex ratio stood at 902 females per 1000 males. Factors such as lack of awareness about government schemes, poor health awareness, and limited educational access hindered women's empowerment.

Focus On Women And Child: Diya Kumari

With a special focus on women empowerment and girl child education in Rajasthan, in the recent budget announcement made by Deputy Chief Minister and finance minister Diya Kumari, the announcement to create four Devnarayan Residential Girls Schools, 16 Savitri Bai Phule hostels, 17 college girls hostels, increase in mess allowance for residential institutions upto Rs. 3250, inauguration of 50 Bedded Saraswati Half Way Homes at divisional headquarters, opening of Girl Child Care Institutes in 10 districts headquarters, opening of Rani Laxmibai Centers in higher secondary school/college at block level, distribution of 35,000 scooties for girls students, a Nutri Kit Yojana for 2,35,000 female beneficiaries were announced.

“Moreover, women in self-help groups eligible under the Lakhpati Didi category can now avail loans up to ₹1 lakh at reduced interest rates of 1.5 per cent. The government aims to provide these benefits to 3 lakh women by next year,” announced Kumari, who is also the minister for Women and Child Development in Rajasthan.

Census Literacy Gap

Data from the 2011 Census pegs Malarna Doongar in Rajasthan as the tehsil in India that has the largest literacy gap between men and women. The average literacy is 60.79 per cent. But 78.79 per cent of the males are literate, with only 41.03 per cent for women, a difference of 37.75 percentage points. As per the recent Annual Status of the Education Report (ASER), an analysis of the top 5 tehsils with such a difference in India shows that all five are in Rajasthan, with three in Sawai Madhopur district alone. To be sure, there are districts with considerably lower literacy percentages for women, but those typically—some are tribal districts in Chhattisgarh—have correspondingly low percentages for male literacy as well.

'In terms of districts with such a large difference in literacy rates between men and women, it is also clear that Rajasthan has a problem. Eight of the top 10 districts (with Sawai Madhopur the highest) are in the state. The only two exceptions in the top 10 are Ramban in Jammu and Nuh in Haryana', reads the report. 

Gender Gap In Dropout Rates

Meanwhile, the latest Unified Digital Information on School Education (UDISE) report for the 2023-24 session also revealed that the largest gender gap in dropout rates yet prevails in Sawai Madhopur and Jhalawar, with 4.51 per cent, indicating a poor literacy of the girls, followed by 3.97 per cent in Dholpur and 3.31 per cent in Karauli.

However, Barmer recorded a slight improvement in the situation, as only 15.64 per cent of girls have dropped out in the 2023-24 session against the 17.22 per cent of boys.