Anjali Noronha January is the month we celebrate Republic Day. January is also the month of the birthdays of two iconic women teachers – Savitribai Phule and Fatima Sheik, who dedicated their lives to educate women, girls, and boys of the deprived communities. As we acknowledge and celebrate these two occasions, let us take a moment to reflect how far we have come as a country in terms of educating the less privileged among us. At the time of independence, the education of girls, especially girls from the deprived classes and castes, was not accepted as the norm. Beginning with only 9% literate women in 1947, female literacy rates have grown to 77% in 2023. There remains a gender gap though with male literacy at 84.7%. However, the gross enrollment ratio (GER) of girls has overtaken that of boys in elementary and secondary education in all categories – average, SC, and ST – by 2011-12 and remains so till date. The dropout rates, however, increase substantially with the level of education, from about 1% in primary education to about 15% in secondary education, with girls having a slightly higher dropout rate at higher levels. This decreases their access to higher education. While the scheduled caste indicators are around the overall average rates, the scheduled tribes are much worse in all indicators, except gender parity. Their enrollment rates in secondary, higher secondary, and higher education are 10-15% lower than the overall and SC rates. Similarly, their dropout rates are 3 to 7% higher than the overall rates and 2 to 5% higher than the scheduled castes. This means that fewer boys and girls of the scheduled tribe communities reach secondary and higher education and therefore are unable to access better economic opportunities. Unlike the publication of category-wise GER till 2018 by UDISE (Unified District Information System for Education), there was no separate data published for Muslims as a group until 2018. Post 2018, some data on Muslim enrollment as a percentage of overall enrollment has been published. It shows that both Muslim girls and boys are participating in education at all levels at the percentage of their population. We, don’t, however, know whether all their children are in schools. The de-notified tribes – the Pardhis, Banjaras, Gadialohar, Kanjars, Bahelias – are the most deprived sections of the society and their participation as a separate category has not been tracked. They are mostly nomadic and their livelihoods rendered illegal due to various Forest Acts since the British