Rohtas lone girls’ college in a state of utter neglect

SASARAM: Almost seven decades have elapsed since the country first went to the polls in 1951-52. Women education, however, remains neglected in Sasaram parliamentary constituency.
Ironically, the constituency was twice represented in the Lok Sabha by Meira Kumar, the formidable Congress neta who served as a Union minister from 2004 to 2009 and as the Lower House’s first woman Speaker from 2009 to 2014.Her father Jagjivan Ram, popularly called Babuji, had represented the constituency since 1952 till his death in 1986.
At least 2,700 students are enrolled in the Rohtas Mahila College, the only college for women in Sasaram, which opened in 1972. Strangely enough, the institute does not offer a single course in science or commerce.
The neighbouring Bhabhua town, which also falls under the Sasaram constituency, has one government-aided college for women which opened in 1980. It offers few courses in science, but none in commerce and is being run at the mercy of guest teachers.
Located at a distance of approximately 50km, Sasaram and Bhabhua are, incidentally, district headquarter towns of Rohtas and Kaimur districts, respectively.
“None of these colleges offers postgraduate (PG) courses. My daughter had to shift to Varanasi to pursue her masters in a women’s college there,” said Pawan Kumar, a trader who lives in Sasaram’s Navaratan Bazar locality and whose family, like many others in the area, is against sending daughters to co-educational institutions.
As per the information provided by the district electoral office, 7.48 lakh of the 16.07 lakh electors in the constituency are women. However, even the current NDA government’s much-trumpeted ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ campaign has failed to improve the education scenario for Sasaram’s ‘aadhi aabaadi’.
In February 2015, the state government decided to provide free education to girl students till the PG level. No fee was be taken from girls at the time of admission in government universities and colleges. However, this initiative does not seem to have been executed properly.
“The government never reimbursed any fee. Besides, our plea to the authorities concerned to introduce science and commerce courses also fell on deaf ears,” Rohtas Mahila College principal Sudhir Kumar told this reporter and added many subjects in Arts had been running without teachers for a long time.
The only all-girl government school at Sasaram — Rama Rani Girls’ School — which was established in 1955 also does not offer +2 courses in commerce.
“This school originally provided education up to Class X and was upgraded to a +2 institute in 2012. However, no arrangements for extra classrooms were made,” Rama Rani Girls’ School teacher Amit Mukherjee said.