Further Thoughts on Pardada Pardadi

According to Brandon, Pardada Pardadi utilization of money and other incentives to convince parents to send their daughters to school may not be as sustainable as addressing structural barriers that prevent families from sending their children to school to begin with. In a way, Pardada Pardadi serves as conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs since these girls are required to attend and graduate from the school to earn these savings. I do see his reasoning that by incentivizing them with money may seem like the organization is putting an effort to change their behavior out of poverty and putting blame on individuals. However, the Pardada Pardadi Educational Society is not promoting female education over male education as mentioned by Nikki, but rather to address the unequal access between men and women.

            Sometimes, we do have to provide incentives to underserved communities or certain groups of people because they are unable to live according to well-served community’s standard since they do not have the resources to begin with.  By providing them incentives to attend school do not necessarily portray that they are to blame, but rather to empower them to make changes accordingly (with their inputs in mind).

            Furthermore, Maxine Molyneux perspective on focusing efforts only on girls may be unsustainable and may create the effect of burdening them instead of empowering them. Even though this perspective can be accurate within a certain context, Pardada Pardadi is educating these girls so that they do not have to rely on male members of their family or husbands. This is not to say that women should be breadwinners of the family, but now they have the choice to make and allocate earnings according to her necessity without relying on others.  

            Even though I will be volunteering with this organization this coming summer, I will keep in mind all of these questions. I am also positive that there are inefficiencies to the Pardada Pardadi Organization that they can work on. However, I believe that this organization is doing their best at changing structural issues by providing education to girls in the community.