While interviewing the three hundred families, shattered around the urban and the rural setting in Udaipur of Rajasthan state in India, this has been observed that the upward social mobility in term of education, occupation, status etc is disturbing trend in rural areas, while the situation is also not quite impressive in the urban setting also. Both places are socially stratified society, the development of roads and growth of transportation facilities have grown significantly. This has increased the chances of reasonable economic mobility, but the positive changes in status and educational enhancement is confined around those families, who have been in advantageous position since long period of time.
The basic reasoning here is that the universalization of even elementary education is just a one or two decade old. Although, the educational facilities, both public and private have increased significantly, but the absence of effective institutional mechanism and high rate of drop out, teacher absenteeism has made the accessibility of quality education still as a distance dream for almost majority of population in the country.
Many families are unable to educate their children because of the economic reason. However, this is one of the common cause has been shared by almost every families, where the change in level of education is not visibly persistent in the generation. The sense of achievement is also diversified among the families. In the village level, the most of the families are not able to recognize the ineffective schooling system and absence of proper guidance as the important factors in preventing their children to do well in their life. The interesting aspect is that a large number of families want their son to join the government teaching profession. They observe that the government teacher get good salary without regularly going to school and also get advantage of pension after getting retired from the job.
The important question is why teaching job is one of the best profession in the rural and semi urban social setting? In the prevailing situation of poverty of inspiration among the families, the teacher as person, in the area is seen as most educated and respected person, and a large number of government vacancies are also available in this profession. This has also observed that there are a large number of youth members have completed their basic teacher training professional courses from the other states in India, to get eligible to apply for the government appointed teaching job.
However, sending their children for getting educational degree from other states and city are limited in number and is prevalent in those families, who are able to afford or also have some relative in the places, where the educational institutes are available. The role of relatives in helping the upward social mobility is positive in nature. Again, this is dependent upon the type of relationship and also in cordial family environment. In general, the fight over the immovable property is common in those areas, which make the relation better within the family.
The presence of educational institutions and its functional status are different to each other. In the villages, where schools are functional and also provide 12 years of schooling, many students in these villages are educationally active and pursuing college education. But, there is negligible number of students are able to enroll in the professional education. A gap of four decade has been identified between the two engineers in a village near to urban center. When talking with the family, the family head is in teaching profession, this has been recognized that his son had interaction with the person, who qualified engineering four decades ago and inspired to become the same. After completing his secondary school, he took extra classes for the competitive examination.
Apart from learning and understanding, the effective educational opportunity promotes many choices and options. Career guidance and counseling in the rural and semi urban is a kind of kind, which takes place once in a year. However, this is not a common trend in the school. The role of school teachers and principles do matter in organizing this kind of event in the rural and semi urban areas, while this is a regular feature in many private schools in the urban areas. This is clearly coming out in the observation that the extra effort of teaching staffs in the school also helpful to the student to learn new aspect of choosing career.
Professional diversity is another area, which helps in examining the social mobility, but this is also important that the nature of professional diversity matters in acknowledging the trend and pattern of the social mobility. There are diversity of professional engagement in the rural and semi urban areas, but these professions are not at all lift the family in socially mobile. Apart from the agriculture engagement, a list of sixteen professions has been identified as most popular professional engagement in the rural and semi urban areas. Migrant labor, drivers, motor mechanics, small shop keepers, self employed professions such as barber, carpenter, painters are quite popular among the respondents. There are less number of respondents, have become doctors, engineers, advocates and bank managers.
Although, the occupational diversity has potential to create many avenues and opportunity to enhance their income earning possibility in the village, but, the essence of social mobility is not directly get addressed in the prevailing situation. Here, this is also to clear that, the occupational diversity does not encourage the equal possibility for everyone. A limited number of family is able to avail this opportunity to make their son to move up socially. While, in most of the family in the rural areas, the son is either a migrant labor or daily wage earner or seasonally engaged in the farming.
During the interaction with the family, this has been observed that the farming is considered a least preferred profession among them and they are not interested to engage their sons in this occupation. One family clearly said that his son has not yet married because he has been doing farming after dropping out the school.
The most family want their son to get a job or earn money in the city. Despite of facing the difficult situation related to living in the city, they shared that even farming is also a difficult occupation. In the rural areas, migration to city is probably seen as the status enhancement and helps them to improve the family position in the rural setting. However, this is also a need based option for them, because, the farming is not providing substantial amount of cash to meet the other expenditure at household.
Even the Principle of city based government engineering college has accepted that the most of the students are studying in engineering course in the college have been educated in the urban school and their parents are educated. There are some students who belong to the rural areas, but they have qualified the examination on the basis of caste based reservation. The drop out rate is high among the reserved category of students. The reason behind of this high drop out and low entrance of the rural school educated students are eventually hidden in the schooling system. In many villages, this has been observed that the students have taken their final examination of the subject like science and mathematics, without any teaching guidance. The post of these subjects’ teachers has been lying vacant in the school since years.
The rural students, who are studying in the educational centers, they also accept that whatever they have been studying here without any proper guidance. One aspirant of teaching profession said that he wanted to study science to become doctor but he could not take science because they science subject was not available in his village school and the financial problem prevented him to get enroll in the other school outside his village. Now, he is inspiring to be a government teacher, because he wants to get a government job. There are a large number of educated students or aspirants for the government job subscribe the similar stories. Eventually, this situation critically highlights that the government is still consider a important player in creating and providing the secure job opportunity.
The faith on the private sector among the rural masses is still not fully developed and the limited professional options are available for the rural masses in the private sector, because a majority of the educated youth are least interested to look for an employment in the private sector. The information about the different kind of jobs in the private sectors is also limited among the families in these villages. While most of the migrant labors from these villages are working in the informal sector, which is largely controlled by the private individual in the urban centers.
In some villages, which are located around the mines and industrial development location, the children of these villages have been enrolled in many professional courses, such as engineering, medical, Para medical, nursing etc. In identifying those families, this is again clearly shows that the most of the families were in historically advantageous position and educational environment were prevalent among them last few generation. However, some families belong to the lower social status, but the family head has been employed in the government sector or has been attached with teaching profession. They have disclosed that while staying in this locality, they were able to provide good education with proper guidance to their children, helped them to build their career in the upcoming profession.
The demonstration effect is also an important information network for those, who are not exposed to many other professions, which can be better option for the social mobility. The demonstration effect is also a source of inspiration in the society. The magnitude of this effect has been observed in the discussion and narration about the individual achievement in the villages and semi urban setting. The oral tradition in the family acknowledges and strengths the demonstration effect and inspire their growing up youth to learn from others who have done comparatively better and achieved in their life.
Demonstration effect also encourages building better information network for proper guidance, create many options and choices and most important aspect is to provide opportunity to individual for taking decision about what he or she would like to pursue in his or her future career. Generally, this is a source of inspiration for many families and individual. In many villages, this is also a matter of pride and recognition that if anyone qualifies or well placed in the job market. But, in most of the villages and semi urban localities, there is lack of local role model as a source of inspiration. While asking about what they want to become in their life? Most of the parents were interested to see their children above their own social and economic status, but majority of grown up individual either don’t able to recall what was good profession for them or they never had dream to become highly qualified professionals. This is not a fault of an individual, but a faulty system selectively promotes the ranges of dreaming and inspiration for minimum number of people.
Is their any relationship between the economic deprivation and poverty of inspiration in the rural areas? The observation shows that there is some evidences of positive relationship between these two situations of poverty, and there are many fathers of economic deprivation and poverty of inspiration in the rural and semi urban areas in India. The growth and development of an individual is largely under consideration of the family. Within the family, the individual’s needs are fulfilled and satisfied. When, we find that some families are moving fast in the social mobility ladder because the economic situation of the family is better than others, so they are able to create conducive environment for the personal and professional growth for the growing up individual in the family. The observation clearly states that the role of family matters a lot for the positive development of individual. The merit of this argument is based on the observation but this point is also not free from the critical evaluation.
This has been observed that the people of those villages are resourceful and comparatively better off which are located near to the urban center. They have become materially well off by selling their fertile land to small industrial units or business enterprises. In some of these villages, some instance of the professional enhancement has happened. Specially, some girls have done extremely well in these villages. The reason is not they have been educated because of merely money, but their parents provided them consistent educational support and their relative also played important role in extending support.
