Their seven-month-old sister is named Nirasha (disappointment). Disappointment, because she was born a girl when there were already six in the family. “Our grandmother named her that because she was supposed to be a boy, and not a girl,” says Gayatri Panwar, 18, the eldest daughter of the family. She is standing outside her brick-walled house in the village of Chachiyawas in Rajasthan’s Ajmer district. There is no electricity; there hasn’t been any in the house for six months. “We’ve spent the entire summer without electricity. Now we’ve forgotten what it feels like,” says Gayatri’s 15-year-old sister Savitri.
Their father is an out-of-job alcoholic and mother a daily wage labourer, who earns around ₹250-300 per day. Gayatri and Savitri are both resisting attempts by their family to get them married. They want to study, get a job, and “stand on their own feet”, says Gayatri, who is in class 10. They draw inspiration from their friend and neighbour Payal Prajapati, 18, whose parents got her married when she was in Class 5, but who is now is putting up a fight against her ‘gauna’ (ritual where a child bride is sent to her marital home) and staying put with her family.
(This story appears in the 21 October, 2022 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)