LITERACY IN INDIA

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UPSC SOCIOLOGY MAINS – Paper 2 – Part C – Chapter 1 – Education and Social change.

MAINS GS 2 – Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.

 

LITERACY RATE DEFINITION

  • Literacy rate in a population refers to the percentage of literate individuals among persons aged seven and above.
  • According to the 2011 Census, a person is considered as literate when they can read and write a simple message with understanding at least in any one language.

 

STATISTICS

  • As per Population Census of India 2011, the Literacy rate of India has shown improvement of almost 9.2 percent. It has gone up to 74.04% in 2011 from 65.38% in 2001, thus registering an increase of over 9 percent in the last 10 years.
  • The nation also suffers from a wide gender disparity in literacy rate with a literacy rate of 82.14% for men and 65.46% for women.
  • According to a study by the National Statistical Office conducted between July 2017 and June 2018, the literacy rate of males (84.7%) is higher than that of females (70.3%) in India.
  • With 96.2 percent literacy, Kerala has once again emerged as the most literate state in the country, while Andhra Pradesh featured at the bottom with a rate of 66.4 percent, showed a report based on National Statistical Office (NSO) survey.
  • The report on ‘Household Social Consumption: Education in India as part of the 75th round of National Sample Survey – from July 2017 to June 2018’ provides for state-wise detail of literacy rate among the persons aged seven years and above.
  • According to the study, after Kerala, Delhi has the best literacy rate at 88.7 percent, followed by Uttarkhand’s 87.6 percent, Himachal Pradesh’s 86.6 percent, and Assam’s at 85.9 percent.
  • The survey showed that the male literacy rate is higher than the female literacy rate among all states. In Kerala, the male literacy rate is 97.4 percent compared to 95.2 percent among females.

 

REASONS FOR ILLITERACY IN INDIA

  • Illiteracy in India is because of a complex web of social and economic divide in the country.
  • Economic disparities, gender discrimination, caste discrimination, and technological barriers lead to illiteracy in India.
  • High rate of population.
  • ‘Extreme’ poor cannot afford things for basic livelihood let alone education.
  • Child labour.
  • Ineffectiveness of primary schools in enrolling and retaining students.
  • Lack of political will in rectifying the literacy issue.

 

GOVERNMENT EFFORTS

  • The Government set up National Literacy Mission 1988, in order to promote literacy in the country.
  • Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan is yet another program introduced by the Government it is also referred to as ‘Each One Teach One’ it aimed at universalization of elementary education.
  • Another step that helped in order to attain the literacy was 86th Amendment Act 2002 that made free and compulsory education for the children in the age group of 6-14 years, a fundamental right.
  • A number of schemes have been launched by the central government to meet the needs of the educationally disadvantaged viz. Operation on Blackboard,.
    District Primary Education Programme, Education Guarantee Scheme and Alternative and Innovative Education, etc
  • In order to focus on quality education, the Central rules to the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 have been amended to include reference on class-wise, subject-wise learning outcomes.
  • The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) conducts periodic national surveys of learning achievement of children in classes 3, 5, 8 and 10. Four rounds of National Achievement Survey (NAS) have been conducted so far for class 5 and three rounds for classes 3 and 8.
  • A single point repository of e resources called e- PATHSHALA containing NCERT textbooks and various other learning resources has been developed for showcasing and disseminating all educational resources including textbooks, audio, video, periodicals, and a variety of other print and non-print materials.
  • A programme for utilization of satellite communication technologies for transmission of educational e-contents through 32 National Channels i.e. SWAYAM PRABHA DTH-TV has been launched.