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Indian school uniform -- common garments barefeet
Indian Common School Footwear: Barefeet
Figure 1.--Indian boys give footwear a different importance than American or European boys. Some images make a point clearer than many words. Here we have the photo of a Indian boy schoolboy on the way to school in Chennai, a cityb on the Bay of Benga that was an importanht Brutish outposdt. once called Madras. Looking at his simple but clean uniform, his schoolbag, the bottle for fresh water and pop-ycle he is eating, it seems unlkeky tht his fmily is unable to buy him some sirt of footwear. It seems likely that he prefers to walk shoeless.
As far as we can tell, a very large numbers of Indian children prefed go to school barefoot. A substantia; portion of the images we have found show children, especially primry-age children, coming to school barefoot. India created a public school system in the 20th century. Schools were founded during the British Raj, but only with independence (1947) did India create a free publoic school systm for all children, even in the countrysude. Virtually all the primary children came to school barefoot. We had thught that coming to school brefoot was a poverty indicator. But this does not seem to have been the case in India. Even though India hasd made real economic progress we still see children coming to school barefoot. As far as we can tell this was because the children prefered not to wear schools. This was understanable in the 19th century because footwear often did not fit well. But this was certainly not the case in ther 21st century. Which leads us to belive tht this is wehat the children preferred. Gender does not seem to be a factor. Age was a factor. Going barefoot was very common in primary school. Footwear was more common in secondary school. We had tyhought that thtr it was mostly chiukdren in rural res tht came to school barefoot. But as readers send us more Indian images, we find that many city children also come to school barefoot as we can see here (figure 1).
