Words out: Literacy rate up but well short of plan panel target

Updated on: Monday, April 04, 2011

India’s literacy rate has touched 74 per cent, according to the provisional results of the 2001 Census, up from 65 per cent in 2001 and just 52 per cent in 1991. But this is well short of the target set by the Planning Commission to achieve a literacy rate of over 85 per cent by 2011-12.

Only 10 states and Union Territories with mostly with very small populations, barring Kerala with a population of 33 million and Delhi with 16 million, are over the 85 per cent target.

Four high-population states accounting for about 44 per cent of the country’s population, UP, Bihar, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh, have not even managed 70 per cent literacy and Madhya Pradesh just about touched 71 per cent.

Bihar and Rajasthan have the lowest literacy rates among major states in the country, 64 per cent and 67 per cent respectively, and they also have the lowest female literacy rate of about 53 per cent. The huge disparity in improvement of literacy can be gauged from the fact that there are still districts like Alirajpur in Madhya Pradesh and Bijapur in Chhattisgarh where the literacy rate is as low as 37 per cent and 42 per cent respectively.

The census definition of literacy is the ability to both read and write in any language. The population below six years is not counted as they are considered illiterate irrespective of their ability to read or write.

Not only is India’s literacy rate inching upward, what is even more heartening is that the male-female literacy gap has been significantly reduced in the last one decade. While the percentage growth in overall literacy during this period is 39 per cent, for men it was 32 per cent and for women it was a very high 49 per cent. In the decline of 312 million among illiterates between 2001 and 2011 women accounted for 171 million outnumbering the men (141 million).

In fact, the gap in literacy between men and women has been reduced to an all-time low of just 16.7 percentage points. In 2011, male literacy is 82 per cent and female literacy about 65.5 per cent. In 2001, this gap was 21.6 percentage points. Out of almost 218 million literates added during the decade, 110 million were women compared to just 107 million men. The states and union territories which have reduced the male-female literacy gap to 10 percentage points or less are Chandigarh, Nagaland, Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya, Lakshadweep, Kerala and Andaman and Nicobar islands. Again, all these have very small populations, except Kerala.

The state with the largest gap in male and female literacy is Rajasthan, with an almost 28 percentage point difference. The other states with a large gap mostly in the region of 20 percentage points are Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Bihar.

Having crossed the 70 per cent literacy mark, though India would now be out of the league of countries with very poor development record, it is still way below countries like Congo (81 per cent), South Africa (88 per cent), Brazil (90 per cent), Sri Lanka (91 per cent) and China (93 per cent) and has a lot of catching up to do.

Words out: Literacy rate up but well short of plan panel target

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