Indian Schoolgirls Are Leading a Quiet Cycling Revolution

Nibha Kumari, a resident of Bihar, India’s poorest state, recalls how a bicycle transformed her life when she turned 15.

For two years, six days a week, he cycled for two hours a day to get from home to school and training classes and back, using a bicycle provided by the state government.

“If I hadn’t had my period, I don’t think I would have graduated high school. It changed my life,” says Nibha, now 27.

Daughter of a farmer from Begusarai district, Nibha was sent to live with her aunt 10 km (six miles) away to attend a nearby primary school. Mobility was difficult for girls and public transport was unreliable.

When Nibha returned home to attend high school, she got on her bicycle and started riding the bumpy roads of the village to continue her studies.

“The girls have gained a lot of confidence after they started riding bicycles to school and taking coaching classes. Now more and more of them are going to school. Most of them have free bicycles,” says Bhuvaneshwari Kumari, a health worker from Begusarai.

He’s right. A new peer-reviewed study published in the journal ScienceDirect reveals extraordinary insights into school-going children and cycling in rural India.

The study by Srishti Agrawal, Adit Seth and Rahul Goel found that the most notable increase in cycling in India occurred among rural girls, more than doubling from 4.5% in 2007 to 11% in 2017, thus narrowing the gender gap in this activity.

“This is a quiet revolution. We call it a revolution because cycling levels have increased among girls in a country that has high levels of gender inequality in terms of female mobility outside the home, in general, and for cycling, in particular,” says Ms Agrawal.

State-run free bicycle programs since 2004 have targeted girls, who have higher dropout rates than boys due to household chores and long, grueling walks. This approach is not unique to India: Evidence from countries such as Colombia, Kenya, Malawi, and Zimbabwe also shows that bicycles effectively increase girls’ enrollment and retention in school. But the reach here is unmatched.

The three researchers, from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi and the Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies in Mumbai, analyzed transportation patterns for school-age children aged 5 to 17 from a national education survey, examined the effectiveness of government programs that provide free bicycles to students, and tested their influence on bicycle usage rates.

They found that nationwide, the percentage of students bicycling to school increased from 6.6 percent in 2007 to 11.2 percent in 2017.

Cycling to school in rural areas has doubled over the decade, while in urban areas it has remained stable. Indian city roads are notoriously unsafe, with low numbers of urban cycling to school linked to poor road safety and more cars on the roads.

India’s cycling revolution is most substantial in the villages, with states like Bihar, West Bengal, Assam and Chhattisgarh leading the growth. These states have populations comparable to some of the largest European countries. The study found that cycling was more common for long distances in rural areas than in urban areas.

India began reporting cycling behavior for the first time only in the last census in 2011. Only 20 percent of those who commuted to work outside the home reported using a bicycle as their primary mode of transportation. But people in villages cycled more (21 percent) than in cities (17 percent).

Additionally, more working men (21.7%) than their female counterparts (4.7%) cycled to work. “Compared to international contexts, this level of gender gap in cycling is among the highest in the world,” says Ms. Agrawal.

American suffragette Susan B Anthony said that the bicycle “has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a sense of freedom and autonomy.”

Researchers wonder whether women are cycling less as they age because of fewer job opportunities and a dropout from the workforce. Nibha stopped cycling after she got married and moved in with her in-laws. Although she still rides away from home while she trains to be a teacher, when asked about her commute, she simply says, “I don’t need a bike anymore.”