The Hindu : National : President for focus on women’s literacy

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Tuesday, Sep 09, 2008
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President for focus on women’s literacy

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: Literacy should help people generate organisational energy and catalyse social action, President Pratibha Devisingh Patil said on Monday.

Addressing the International Literacy Day function here, the President said social, economic, political and human benefits would not accrue if literacy was confined to merely signing one’s name and learning a few letters of the alphabet.

Ms. Patil said special efforts should be made to make women — who currently constitute two-thirds of the illiterates in the world — literate. She also urged the Central government and State governments to give top priority to literacy as a vital instrument for achieving inclusive growth and sustainable development. She gave a similar call to civil society organisations to support the National Literacy Mission (NLM).

Breaching barriers

Union Minister of State for School Education and Literacy M.A.A. Fatmi said the NLM had linked literacy to development, women’s empowerment, health and livelihood. He hailed the role it played in breaching many social barriers including the purdah system.

Secretary in the Department of School Education and Literacy A.K. Rath said the literacy rate had gone up by 12 per cent from 1991 to 2001. More encouraging was the fact that the literacy rate among the Schedule Castes and the Scheduled Tribes went up faster than the national average by 17 per cent and 17.5 per cent respectively.

He lamented that there were as many as 304 districts with literacy rates below the national average of 64 per cent. Within these, female literacy was less than 50 per cent in 260 districts. In 170 districts, the literacy rate among the SCs was less than 50 per cent and 288 districts recorded below the half-way mark literacy among the STs.

Awards presented

The President gave away the Satyen Maitra Literacy Award to various districts for their work in literacy programmes: Bishnupur (Manipur) for Total Literacy Campaign; Garwha (Jharkhand) for Post Literacy Programme; and Jhansi (Uttar Pradesh), Sarguja (Chattisgarh), Udaipur (Rajasthan), Medak (Andhra Pradesh) and Begusarai (Bihar) for Continuing Education Programme.

Besides, the NLM-UNESCO Award was given to the Jan Shikshan Sansthan in Sivaganga (Tamil Nadu) and Gaya (Bihar). The third NLM-UNESCO Award went to the State Resource Centre, Chennai.

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