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Jaipur: Political parties in Rajasthan are now sparring over the changing colour of bicycles given to school-going girls, reflecting the pretentious importance it attaches to girls’ education even as a recent study provides empirical evidence that cycling to school improves access to education.
Recently, Rajasthan’s Education Minister Madan Dilwar announced that the colour of bicycles distributed to Class IX girl students in government schools will switch from black to saffron. The black-coloured bicycles were given to schoolgirls during the previous Congress regime in the state.
Although Dilawar claimed no special reason for changing the colour of bicycles, he pointed out that the previous BJP government led by Vasundhara Raje also distributed free saffron-coloured cycles. The saffron colour is usually associated with the right-wing BJP. Incidentally, the Congress government had changed the colour to black.
As Opposition cried hoarse over the unnecessary change of colour, BJP state president Madan Rathore hit back on Wednesday. "Why does Congress have an aversion to saffron colour? Saffron is symbolic of bravery, sacrifice, energy and valour. And Congress even fears saffron in its dreams while we will go from strength to strength,” he asked.
He also accused Congress of changing names of schemes and projects on coming to power.
When questioned about the expenses involved, he said that the Congress government should have been questioned when they changed the colour of cycle to black from saffron.
The state education department has floated tenders for saffron coloured cycles, which is expected to cost the exchequer an additional Rs 17 crore.
In April 2023, the Gehlot-led government had bought black-coloured bicycles worth Rs 133 crore for distribution among class IX girl students within the next three months, as elections were due in Dec 2023. The cost of each cycle had come to Rs 3,857 then. But now with change in colour, the cost of each cycle would go up by Rs 76 and the cost of each cycle is likely to be around Rs 3,933. And as such the government would now have to spend Rs 150 crore in total on buying cycles for around 3,50,000 girl students.
The free bicycle scheme was started in the state in 2009 to help girls stay in school after class VIII, as many drop out in class IX due to transportation issues and also because they are adolescent and parents worry about their safety.
A recent study published in Journal of Transport Geography by Srishti Agrawal, Adit Seth and Rahul Goel says that the most notable rise in cycling in India had occurred among rural girls-increasing more that two times from 4.5 in 2007 to 11% in 2017, reducing the gender gap in the activity.