Couple exhaust their savings in buying bus to send girls to college

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Couple exhaust their savings in buying bus to send girls to college

The girls also had to face harassment on the bus.

By Web Report

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Published: Tue 30 Oct 2018, 1:08 PM

Last updated: Tue 30 Oct 2018, 3:11 PM

A paediatrician in Rajasthan, India, bought a bus spending his own savings so that girls in his village could attend college without any fear.  
Rameshwar Prasad Yadav took Rs 17 lakh from his general provident fund and Rs 2 lakh from his savings to buy a white Tata Starbus for Rs 19 lakh (Dh94,000 approximately). The girls-only bus now picks and drops students of the nearest college which is 18 kms away in the village of Kotputli. 
Two years ago in 2016, Yadav and his wife, Tarawati, were driving to Churi, their village in Rajasthan, when they saw four girls standing by the road in heavy rain. Tarawati offered them a lift and heard the girls' plight. 
Their attendance was low as the girls usually had to trudge 3 to 6 kms on a hot and dusty road to reach the public bus stop and also faced harassment on the public bus. "The boys misbehave with us on the bus," one student told them.
The couple had married early and Tarawati had given birth to a baby girl Hemlata who died when she was just six-month-old in 1976 after she fell ill. "My wife took her to a doctor who gave her an injection. Her body turned blue and she died soon after," he recounts in a report by The Times of India
So when the couple heard about the four girls struggling to reach college in the pouring rain, they decided to do something for them. "After we reached home, my wife asked me, 'Apan kuchh kar sakte hain kya (can we do something for them)?" Yadav replied with another question, "If our own daughter was alive today, how much would we have spent on her education and wedding?"   
"Around Rs 20 lakh," Tarawati estimated. 
"I decided to buy a bus for them," said Yadav. "We wanted a daughter but had three sons thereafter. Now, I feel I have 50 Hemlatas," he said. The bus provides free rides to and from college for the girls of Churi and the villages of Pawala, Kayampura Baas and Banethi in central Rajasthan's Jaipur district. When they started the bus service, Yadav invited the same four girls to inaugurate it. "After our daughter's death, there was a sense of loss. But now there's is a feeling of fulfilment," said Tarawati. 
The 40-seater is a blessing for the girls who now attend college with ease and their attendance has also doubled. Yamini Chaturvedi, who teaches home science in the college said, "Parents would ask why they needed to go to college every day." She cited a case of a poor parent who was afraid to send his daughter to college alone. "He would call to check if the lecturer had arrived and only then send her," Chaturvedi said. 
Aman Verma, a BA second-year student in Kotputli's Shrimati Pana Devi Girls College, said she saves Rs 40 and one hour every day. "My attendance has almost doubled," said Aman whose father lost a leg in an accident and her mother works as a farm hand. While, a retired teacher, Vishnu Dutt, said he is no longer worried about how his three daughters will get home from college.  
Not only this, Yadav carefully selected the driver of the bus keeping in mind the safety of the girls. He invited applications for the driving job and four men from neighbouring villages had applied. Parents of the 37 girls who had registered for the bus service picked one driver unanimously.  
"Thirty-four parents named Laxman Singh who was instructed not to allow any male on the bus. Not even me," said Yadav, adding, "Once when driving the girls home, he ignored me on the road. I rewarded him Rs 100."  
However, there is one problem for the doctor, who runs a private practice about 50 kms away after retiring from government service last July. "I spend Rs 36,000 every month on diesel, salary of the driver and conductor. The authorities have waived the toll, but I still pay Rs 5,000 as road tax every month. I have written to the authorities to waive it but it's futile," he said. 
The bus service has been running for a year now and has stopped many girl students to dropout of college and given wings to their dreams.  
While, Yadav is happy to drive his 12-year-old Maruti 800.


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