Devlina Bhattacharjee
Devlina Bhattacharjee is an Analyst with the Partnership and Strategic Initiatives team at IPE Global. She holds a Master’s in Education from TISS, Mumbai. An educator at heart, she enjoys writing and reflecting on the world through unique observations.
Bagru, Rajasthan
Bagru, a small town just an hour’s drive from Jaipur, is best known for its centuries-old tradition of hand-block printing—specifically Bagru and Dabu prints. We entered a bustling morning market before arriving at the Government Girls Senior Secondary School, tucked away behind leafy gates. A vibrant Hindi-medium campus of over 800 girls, it radiated the kind of energy you hope to find in a place meant for learning and growing.
‘We’, being Srijita and me, are visiting this girls’ school in Bagru to see and understand firsthand how vocational education under Manzil impacts these young lives. The visit started by meeting the principal in his office, and the vice-principal joined soon after. The school’s principal has been deeply invested in the vocational education programme operational in the school since 2019 and has made it a personal mission to see the success of the programme. The school offers two VE streams: Beauty & Wellness (B&W) and IT/ITES, which run from grades 9 to 12, with daily periods.
We visited both the B&W and the IT/ITES labs.
The B&W lab was vibrant and fully equipped – salon chairs, hair wash units, mani-pedi stations, and projects made by the girls. The IT lab was equally well-equipped — rows of desktops, colourful posters, and project work that reflected both digital literacy and job readiness.
On the day of our visit, the corridors buzzed with anticipation for the visit and interactions that were to follow. “What do you find in Bagru that you don’t find in your Delhi?” one girl asked us playfully. The answer – “the people, the town melas, and YOU all” – led to giggles, but beneath the banter was a deeper sense of pride in their place and identity.
The New Narratives Emerging from Vocational Education
While traditional norms still push girls toward marriage and domesticity, the vocational education labs tell a different story. Talking to the girls, it became clear to us that Manzil hadn’t just plugged in some skill gaps; it had cracked something open. It had handed them a mirror and said, “Look – this is who you could be.” While some stories followed the expected path (course → skill → job), many revealed interesting and surprising ways in which vocational education was shaping their choices and aspirations.
In the B&W class, girls discussed their aspirations with clarity and ambition. Nandini, who always wanted to be a makeup artist, joined the course with a purpose. Payal dreams of opening her own salon in the city of Jaipur. Sejal, a science student, always wanted to be a doctor. After learning about skincare and anatomy through the B&W course, she now aims to become a “skin doctor”, a dermatologist, merging vocational knowledge with her career aspirations. Others, like Priyanka, who come from a single-parent household with six siblings, see the course as a means to ease their family’s financial burden by starting to earn.
Similarly, girls in the IT/ITES course know too well that “the future is in technology and computers”. Beyond learning digital tools, the girls were exposed to polytechnic colleges, ITIs, and e-mitras (government-run digital service centres that offer access to public services and job-related resources). Bhavna, from the IT course, shared her plans to start a “low-investment, high-profit” business, which, according to her, is a fast-food stall in a busy area, using her digital and employability skills. Ayushi was already using her training at home – paying bills, booking tickets, and supporting her father’s business using her computer skills to digitise some of the tasks he currently does manually. Their vocational trainer put it rightly, “they were trained e-mitra service providers in their homes and neighborhoods”.
The girls spoke of going to work and earning, opening and scaling their own businesses, supporting their families, becoming doctors, teachers, chartered accountants, IAS officers and what not! But now, they aren’t just imagining futures – they’re planning them, actively and decisively.
Nusrat’s Story: A Portrait of Courage
Among the many stories that moved us, Nusrat’s stood out.
Nusrat joined the school in grade 9, switching from an English-medium school to Hindi-medium. Though the shift was tough, she adapted quickly – with the help of her teachers – and emerged as one of the school’s toppers.
But Nusrat’s real education happened outside the classroom. She apprenticed at a beauty parlour, learned IT skills, taught tuition classes, and secretly saved money – all without her family’s knowledge. Her father disapproved of her working, so she quietly built her skill set and future, determined to one day start her own salon.
In the B&W course, Nusrat became a peer trainer, assisting classmates in both theory and practice. Even after graduation, she returns to guide younger students – carrying her own equipment and mentoring them voluntarily.
Despite securing a scholarship for a B.Sc. degree, family pressure and a forced marriage proposal derailed her college plans. When confronted by her father, she revealed that she had saved ₹1.5 lakh from her freelance work and part-time job. “If you force me,” she told him, “I will run away – not with a boy, but for my career.”
Today, Nusrat continues working towards her dream – running her own salon, where she hopes to offer free training and employment to local girls and widows. Her younger sister is now enrolled in the same vocational course. Nusrat’s vision is not just personal – it’s communal – she plans on creating more and more jobs for girls like her – “They deserve to dream, too,” she says.
Final thoughts: What future are you nurturing when you enable someone’s potential?
I walked into a school that day. I left with a different understanding of freedom. It doesn’t always arrive with fanfare – sometimes, it shows up as a desktop computer, a salon chair, a class on employability skills. Sometimes, freedom is braided quietly into a girl’s hair with her own hands. That’s what vocational education is doing here – not just plugging skill gaps but unlocking agency, shifting aspirations, and offering girls a path they didn’t know they were allowed to take. Before Manzil, many of them didn’t realise they could dream beyond what was set for them – and even if they did, they didn’t know how to begin. Manzil brought the “how” into their classrooms. It placed the tools, trainers, and confidence within reach. Like block printing, where each bold pattern begins with a single carved block, this is where new futures are being printed — one skill, one class, one choice at a time.
