23 May 2023

Speaker : Professor Nishith Prakash from Northeastern University, Boston, MA

Speaker: Professor Nishith Prakash from Northeastern University, Boston, MA.

Date and Time: 23rd May 2023 at 3.00 PM (IST)

Zoom: Link

Meeting ID: 869 7534 5866

Passcode: 757181

ADRI is organising a Talk on “Wheels of Change: Transforming Girl's Lives with Bicycles” by Professor Nishith Prakash from Northeastern University, Boston, on May 23, 2023 at 3:00 PM (IST).

Bihar and ADRI have a special role to play in this project as the background work for this project was done as part of IGC Bihar program. Based on the evidence of this work, the authors did an experiment in Zambia which again turned out to be a success. This project was then taken up by the UN and this program was scaled up in six African countries.

Patna, May 23. Professor Nishith Prakash of Northeastern University, USA gave a talk on the subject of Wheels of Change: Transforming Girls’ Lives with Bicycles today. This event was organized by Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI).  Professor Prakash along with other researchers had done a study on the impact of Bihar’s “Mukhyamantri Balika Cycle Yojana” for ADRI’s IGC-Bihar program. He found that the scheme has managed to reduce the gender gap in education.

The afore-mentioned study served as a fountainhead for him to carry out a fruitful experiment in Zambia. He pointed out that one year after the intervention of the same Bihari model in Zambia, absenteeism of girls in schools had been reduced by 27 %, late arrivals by 66% and average commuting time to schools by 35%. The girls’ Math test scores had improved and they felt in control of their own lives. Now, they could aspire to higher things with a much better self-image. A desire to delay marriage and pregnancy to an optimal age was also induced in them. This model was subsequently taken up by the United Nations (UN) and unveiled in another six African countries.

The Yojana has been a thumping success in Bihar as it has effectively addressed major challenges for many adolescent girls. The challenges included the girls’ safety when commuting to school, an uncomfortably long distance to school from home, and deep-rooted cultural norms. They found that this scheme improved school attendance of girls and reduced their dropout rates by almost 40 percent. All this inspired many Indian states to emulate Bihar.

Shree Tripurari Sharan, Information Commissioner of Bihar corroborated the findings of this study saying that it was evident that the lives of girls in the households of Bihar had been transformed. They have been able to get advanced education and suitable life-partners due to the Cycle Yojana.

Earlier, Dr. Ashmita Gupta of ADRI introduced the speaker as her academic brother as both of them had been supervised by a student of Nobel Laureate Abhijit Banerjee for their dissertations. Prof. Prakash has been associated with ADRI for many years. She stressed that the research study has been a major success story and one which was much needed by Bihar.

The aim of ADRI’s IGC-Bihar program was to do research in such a way that it could be applied in all parts of the real world. This study did just that.