NEERAJ: I’m nice and I wear clean clothes. I don’t fight with anybody. I speak nicely to people and I’m sincere.

NARRATION: Three years ago, in a tiny desert village in Rajasthan, we met Neeraj living with 15 members of her herding family, and their goats and water buffalo.

NEERAJ: I’m about nine or 10. I’ve been studying for the past year. If they teach us, we get knowledge and that’s good. I study and I learn a lot: math, multiplication, addition. So, I’m learning.

NARRATION: Neeraj’s mother was not as convinced of the need for education.

DEVKI: What’s so great about being educated? Even if you study, these educated people have nothing to do. Look at them just sitting there. You may as well graze cattle and have fun. We educated our sons and what good has it done? Anyway, the everyday chores will take over.

NARRATION: Neeraj was intended to marry a boy in another village, and while early marriage is common in her area, Neeraj had convinced her parents to send her to night school.

NEERAJ: I work during the day and so I go to night school. I do so much. I have to sweep, I have to bring water, I have to make dung cakes, I have to graze the cows. But these boys do no work, so they go to the day school.

INTERVIEWER: Why can’t you send Neeraj to the day school?

KANARAM: If there’s someone to do the household chores, I have no objection. But who’s going to do the household chores?

NEERAJ: Neeraj!

NARRATION: After a long day of chores, Neeraj and her friend would set out for night school—and enjoy a few moments of play before the teacher arrived. While there are states in India where every child goes to school, Rajasthan has one of the lowest enrollment rates in the country. And thousands of children like Neeraj, who work during the day, go to night school.

SURAJ SINGH: If I keep four this side and four this side, it’ll equal up to eight. How much will four plus four be?

NARRATION: While night school offers the basics, it is only a marginal solution to an overwhelming problem.

NEERAJ: When I come back, I eat, and everyone’s asleep. When I grow up, I want to go to a big school to study. By then, I’ll know more.

NARRATION: When we went to find Neeraj three years later, she was not home. She had been taken out of school two months earlier to help her brother, uncle, and cousin graze the family’s livestock.

DEVKI: We won’t send her out again. We weren’t going to send her this year but we were having trouble with the drought and all. We didn’t have any choice.

NARRATION: In an extended drought, these trips can take months. And this was the second time Neeraj’s schooling had been interrupted for grazing. We went looking for her among the herding families in the desert—and traveled hundreds of miles.

NORAT: Have you seen her around here?

PRABHLEEN AHUJA: Come here everybody. This is a picture of the girl’s mom.

WOMEN: We saw her grazing the cattle over by the watering hole.

WOMAN: Just check over there behind the mountains.

NARRATION: We were unable to find her on this trip. But three months later, Neeraj returned home.

NEERAJ: I was taking care of the really young cattle, feeding them, and protecting them. And cooking food for my brother. He’d come and eat it. I missed school and my brothers and sisters.

NARRATION: Neeraj is back in night school—for the moment. Her school is designed to work around constant interruptions, but the impact on her education is inescapable. Night school rarely takes students above the first or second grade level, and Neeraj has had to repeat much of the curriculum.

SURAJ SINGH: What’s between the one and the two here?

STUDENTS: A plus sign!

NEERAJ: I can write my name and write numbers and I can do my multiplication tables. I used to know more, but I’ve forgotten because I went with the cattle. Now that I’m back, he’ll teach me and I’ll learn quickly. I’ll learn and be able to teach children.

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