We are reproducing excerpts from an article in the Statesman by Arun Mukhopadhyay, titled “Literacy drive – poverty is the hurdle”. The article says India will have the largest number of illiterates in a single country by the year 2000. It also cites the failure of primary education assured in the Constitution. All sweet-sounding words. While the author speaks out the truth by saying that the cause for this is poverty, he is silent on the point as to who kept our people poor. But he has not identified the “poor” who are none other than SC/ST/BCs and Muslims. Povery is not our problem. Poverty is the byproduct of denial and deprivation of our human rights. Once we secure our human rights, we will automatically overcome our poverty and secure education. The ruling class rules India by depriving our human rights and the same rulers also make money and get fame and name, awards and rewards by writing such articles on the failure of our education system. Both are done by the same set of people. – EDITOR.
India has 2.4% of the world’s geographical area and 15% of the world population, but 40% of the world’s illiterates. There were 30 million literates in 1951 and 247 million literates in 1981 with an average rate of growth of 6.23 million literates per year, while the number of illiterates in these years was 300 million and 437 million.
With an overall literacy percentage of 36.3 in 1981, 46% men and 24% women were literate. Out of four women in India, three are illiterate. As in other backward countries, the beginning of education for women is rather late compared with the men. In the year 2000, India will not only have the largest number of graduates, but also the largest number of illiterates (about 54% of the total number of illiterates of the world) in a single country.
The Education policy of 1986 admitted that this dismal scenario of mass illiteracy is due to the failure of the primary education movement. The primary education programme has suffered from various lapses, including the non-fulfilment of the one-village-one-school-target, lack of school buildings and school teachers, inadequate teaching-learning materials and lack of motivation.
My own survey reveals the following four major reasons why few children go to primary schools: (a) before going to schools no food is available for the children who are out since the morning in search of fruits and roots in the forest; (b) the children are engaged in baby-sitting when their parents go out for work; (c) the children are engaged as cowboys or girls and (d) the children do not have enough clothes for going to school. Out of 100 children admitted to the primary schools, only 23% reach class VIII. Thus, illiterates are composed of non-school-going children of school- going age and the dropouts from the primary schools. The paramount factor behind all this is abject poverty which breeds ignorance, inertia and fatalism.
It is estimated that nearly 50% of the Indian population live below the poverty line. It is also said that this problem is the result of an inequitable distribution of wealth inherent in our socio-economic system. For instance, 10% of people in India own 50% of the wealth, while in the rural sector the richer 3.3% own 30% of the land and the poorest 63% own only 10% of the land.
