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"Her family has always believed in education," said Vidhi Kumari, 18, Mangolpuri, Delhi. Her mother never visited the school and her father, a driver, studied only up to the 10th grade. Four of her five sisters are graduates and one is studying in the 12th grade and then the youngest, a brother, is in the Eighth standard.

Even in these extraordinary times, Vidhi tries to stay updated with her online BA classes. "It’s tough," she said and further added, “My sister and I share a phone so when she attends her class, I miss mine, and sometimes it’s the opposite way around.”

With only half attendance, Vidhi is one of the lucky ones. Many ladies in her neighbourhood have dropped out - some doesn’t have a phone, another has no money for recharge and somebody else require a paid work. “This may be a slum,” says Vidhi. “There’s tons of monetary hardship here.”

In India, 320 million children are suffering from school closures caused by coronavirus disease (Covid-19). Online classes don't think about the country’s digital divide where 16% of females have Internet access, compared to 36% males, consistent with the National Sample Survey 2017-18. This gap can sometimes have tragic consequences as in Kerala where a 14-year-old girl, a merit scholar, committed suicide when she couldn’t access her online classes.

Previous epidemics have taught us that the students are foremost vulnerable and find themselves bearing the heaviest burden. The 2014 Ebola crisis saw the amount of out-of-school girls increase three-fold, says Safeena Husain, Founding Father of NGO 'Educate Girls', which works in 17,000 villages in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. "We found that the 2 key indicators for women being out of faculty are poverty and patriarchy,” says Husain. “When these 2 combines, there's an exponential increase in out-of-school girls.”

The education of women has been India’s success story, so far. Although four million are still out of faculty, enrolment rates across all levels went up by 25 percentage points in five years since 2013.

The virus could reverse that success. “The lockdown is burdening girls with household chores and sibling care,” says Plan India’s Executive Mohammad Asif. If these girls drop out of faculty, we will see a spike in early marriage, child labour and trafficking, he warns.

Containing the pandemic has taken priority. Even Educate Girls is currently focused on distributing

rations. “Nobody is talking about education immediately,” says Husain.