Puchtoon
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Two days after the Congress, the BJP and the more saffron elements in the Sangh Parivar got locked in an ugly battle over Narendra Modi's comments "Pahele Sauchalaya, Phir Devalaya" (First toilets and then temples), there is enough evidence to prove that the Gujarat Chief Minister has been saying it for many years in Gujarat, after he found out during his annual his girl child school enrolment drive that parents were not sending their daughters to schools because there were no separate toilets for girls in government primary schools.
The girl child enrolment drive, which is conducted under the label of "Kanya Kelavni" (Girls education), is seen as a leaf that Modi has taken out of the beliefs of Vadodara ruler Sayajirao Gaekwad, who was the first princely ruler in India to make girl education compulsory in 1907. Modi launched the drive in 2002.
According to the state education department, the girl child drop-out rate in Gujarat at primary school level has come down from 37 per cent to around five per cent since the late 1990s. And one of the main reasons behind this is construction of separate toilets by the Modi government for girls in 34,000 Government primary schools. Says an officer in Modi's secretariat, "The Chief Minister has been regularly raising this slogan for the past five years saying when our sisters and mothers don't have separate toilets in rural and even urban areas, constructing toilets should be a top priority over every thing else. To make the drive to make toilets more effective he coined the slogan 'Pahele Sauchalaya, Phir Devalaya'.
The last time he raised the slogan was in the 2012 annual girl child enrolment drive.
However, there is one problem. The Modi government is still grappling with the problem of schools kids in one respect according to the latest CAG report. The report says that every third school-going child in Gujarat is underweight as he is suffering from malnutrition and that the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) to remove malnutrition amongst children has not been implemented properly by the state government, as almost a third of the total beneficiaries have been left out of the purview of the programme.
However, a state government official contested the report. He said that Gujarat, having a very large percentage of tribal population and with typical eating habits of all Gujaratis, had always had comparatively higher malnutrition levels but he disagreed with the CAG report saying it was based on a method which was extremely flawed.
Read more at: 'First toilets then temples' is an old slogan of Modi : Featured, News - India Today
The girl child enrolment drive, which is conducted under the label of "Kanya Kelavni" (Girls education), is seen as a leaf that Modi has taken out of the beliefs of Vadodara ruler Sayajirao Gaekwad, who was the first princely ruler in India to make girl education compulsory in 1907. Modi launched the drive in 2002.
According to the state education department, the girl child drop-out rate in Gujarat at primary school level has come down from 37 per cent to around five per cent since the late 1990s. And one of the main reasons behind this is construction of separate toilets by the Modi government for girls in 34,000 Government primary schools. Says an officer in Modi's secretariat, "The Chief Minister has been regularly raising this slogan for the past five years saying when our sisters and mothers don't have separate toilets in rural and even urban areas, constructing toilets should be a top priority over every thing else. To make the drive to make toilets more effective he coined the slogan 'Pahele Sauchalaya, Phir Devalaya'.
The last time he raised the slogan was in the 2012 annual girl child enrolment drive.
However, there is one problem. The Modi government is still grappling with the problem of schools kids in one respect according to the latest CAG report. The report says that every third school-going child in Gujarat is underweight as he is suffering from malnutrition and that the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) to remove malnutrition amongst children has not been implemented properly by the state government, as almost a third of the total beneficiaries have been left out of the purview of the programme.
However, a state government official contested the report. He said that Gujarat, having a very large percentage of tribal population and with typical eating habits of all Gujaratis, had always had comparatively higher malnutrition levels but he disagreed with the CAG report saying it was based on a method which was extremely flawed.
Read more at: 'First toilets then temples' is an old slogan of Modi : Featured, News - India Today
