A STORY ABOUT RUKSANA

A recent People Matters survey finds that Indian employers are not so serious about employee leaves and time offs

           Yes, the number of women opting for MBA's  in India is increasing. And yes, India Inc. is consistently working to hire more women, who are young, ambitious and increasingly qualified.

But can these women strike a good work-life balance?

Even though India Inc. has been encouraging a greater number of women in the workplace, that number is still low. A new study by Grant Thornton, a global accounting and advisory firm, shows that on average, women make up only 15% of the workforce in Indian companies. Globally, this figure stood at 35%. Today, only 1.8% of CEOs in India are women.

The story of Ruksana, an 11-year-old living on the streets of Kolkata, is one of nine that features in “Girl Rising,” a film about the struggles that girls around the world face to get an education.

The film, released on International Women’s Day, is narrated by A-list Hollywood stars, including Oscar winners Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson.

Ruksana’s story, which is told by Priyanka Chopra, was picked after screenwriters and producers conducted hundreds of interviews with girls trying to get an education in countries stretching from India to Haiti, Peru to Afghanistan. Nine were chosen and their stories were put together in a series of fictionalized documentaries.

“Ruksana’s story is about a really plucky little girl who is always very positive, who lives on the street and how she survives with her smile intact despite all the problems life throws at her,” Sooni Taraporevala, who turned Ruksana’s story into a screenplay for the movie, says of the little girl with a talent for art.

While Ruksana was growing up, her family’s bamboo and cloth home on a sidewalk in Kolkata was often demolished by police in so-called programs of beautification. Then in early 2011 a film crew showed up asking her to star in a movie about her life.

Throughout it all, the little girl fond of wearing braided bunches and a smart red tie has kept going to school.

Ms. Taraporevala told The Wall Street Journal’s India Real Time that she spent four days with Ruksana in Kolkata getting to know her and finding out what her life was like.

   “I chose her because I connected with her being very      fond of drawing and being an artist and having an imagination,I felt as a writer she would be a great  subject,” said Ms. Taraporevala, who also wrote the Academy Award-nominated “Salaam Bombay!” about the lives of street children in Mumbai.

“This is not an out and out documentary, it’s fictional but I haven’t created anything that hasn’t happened,” she said.

All but two girls play themselves in the movie. Concerns for the safety of two of the girls meant actors played their parts. Ruksana plays herself in “Girl Rising,” but actors play the other parts, including her father, who sells sugarcane juice to make a living. Ruksana’s parents had migrated to Kolkata from a rural Indian village in order to find work and to educate their children.

She is one of the lucky ones, says Liam Neeson, the actor whose voice links the girls’ stories together.

“Her parents can’t afford a place to live but they somehow find a way to get their daughters to school,” Mr. Neeson says during the film. Earlier he  says “Educating girls is one of the highest returns on investment in the developing world.”

World Vision, a Christian charity, works with Ruksana’s family and provides the children with school supplies, extra tutoring and a meal every day.

“Because life on the streets can be dangerous, Ruksana and her sisters spend their nights in a nearby shelter run by a local NGO,” a spokesman for the charity said.

In India, four million girls are estimated to be out of school, according to a study conducted in 2009 by the Social and Rural Research Institute in New Delhi.

However estimates vary widely. An earlier study by the Basic Education Coalition in Washington, D.C. said 40 million children, including boys, were out of school in India.

In India, girls’ education is often halted by early marriage, a preference by some parents to educate their sons, and a lack of separate toilets for girls in schools, especially once they reach puberty, education campaigners say.

In “Girl Rising,” produced by education campaign 10X10, the figure for girls out of school worldwide is put at 66 million.

The 10×10 campaign, which is in partnership with Intel, says that educating girls has a significant positive impact on their health, safety and future earning power.

Goldman Sachs GS -0.49% estimated in 2012 that educating more girls in emerging economies would narrow the gender gap in employment and could push income per capita up to 14% higher than the bank’s baseline predictions by 2020.

A World Bank study in 2002 indicated that girls get an 18% return on investment from secondary education against a 14% return for boys.

“Girl Rising” has been marketed entirely via Facebook and Twitter and is being screened in the U.S. through Gathr, a crowd sourced film distribution service.

What will happen to Ruksana after it is released? A spokesman for World Vision said the producers and Intel had committed to providing financial support for her education but she and her family will likely remain living on the streets.

“Even though we may think that, simply building or providing a house for her will solve the problem, the issue is complex and multi-layered, much like poverty itself,” the spokesman said in an email statement.

“Such drastic moves may overwhelm people and catch them unprepared for unforeseen expenses and challenges. Also, once outside their own community and World Vision’s target area, they are also geographically beyond the support and safety net that they earlier benefitted from,” he added.