{"id":35647,"date":"2025-11-18T14:30:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T08:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=35647"},"modified":"2025-11-18T14:30:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T08:45:13","slug":"education-for-girls-hit-hard-by-indias-drying-wells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/education-for-girls-hit-hard-by-indias-drying-wells\/","title":{"rendered":"Education for girls hit hard by India’s drying wells"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NANDURBAR, India, Nov 18:<\/strong> Each morning, 17-year-old Ramati Mangla sets off barefoot with a steel pot in hand, walking several kilometres to fetch water from a distant spring in India’s Maharashtra state.<\/p>\n

By the time she returns, school has already started.<\/p>\n

“I have kept my books,” she said. “But what if I never get a chance to go back?”<\/p>\n

In the drought-hit villages of Maharashtra’s Nashik and Nandurbar districts, wells are drying up and rainfall has become increasingly erratic — forcing families to adapt to harsher living conditions.<\/p>\n

As men migrate to nearby cities in search of work, girls like Mangla are left to take on the responsibility of collecting water.<\/p>\n

It’s a chore that can take hours each day and leaves little time for school.<\/p>\n

Local officials estimate that nearly two million people in these regions face daily water shortages.<\/p>\n

A 2021 UNESCO report warned that climate-related disruptions could push millions of girls worldwide out of classrooms.<\/p>\n

It is a pattern already visible across India’s rural heartlands.<\/p>\n

Teachers say attendance among girls has sharply dropped in recent years, particularly during the dry months.<\/p>\n

Many families, struggling to survive, see no option but to keep their daughters home or marry them early.<\/p>\n

“Children living in drought prone areas, with family responsibilities for fetching water, struggle with attending school regularly — as collecting water now takes a longer time due to water scarcity and pollution,” the UN children’s fund wrote in a report.<\/p>\n

For Mangla, and many other girls across India, climate change is turning the simple act of fetching water into a choice between survival and education.<\/p>\n

Mangla’s story has been spotlighted alongside a photography series shot by Shefali Rafiq for the 2025 Marai Photo Grant, an award open to photographers from South Asia aged 25 or under.<\/p>\n

The theme for 2025 was “climate change” and its impact on daily life and the community of the photographers who enter.<\/p>\n

The award is organised by Agence France-Presse in honour of Shah Marai, the former photo chief at AFP’s Kabul bureau.<\/p>\n

Shah Marai, who was an inspiration for Afghan photographers throughout his career, was killed in the line of duty at the age of 41 in a suicide attack on April 30, 2018, in Kabul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NANDURBAR, India, Nov 18: Each morning, 17-year-old Ramati Mangla sets off barefoot with a steel pot in hand, walking several kilometres to fetch water from a distant spring in India’s Maharashtra state. By the time she returns, school has already started. “I have kept my books,” she said. “But what if I never get a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35647"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35647"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35650,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35647\/revisions\/35650"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}