The national workshop on functional literacy inaugurated recently in New Delhi by Dr. V.K.R V. Rao, Union Education Minister, marks the commencement of the mass literacy programme intended to make 100 million adult illiterates literate by the end of 1980. Since the Fourth Plan coverage is expected to benefit only 10 millions of them the target for the decade requires that the annual coverage in the six years after 1974 is higher than what is to be achieved on the aggregate over the current quinquennium. This is not going to be easy. The country’s experience in adult education is such as to make it clear that there is, on the one side, the reluctance of adults to enlist themselves for this purpose and, on the other, shortages of teachers as well as of financial and other resources. The reluctance of the adult is due to his preference for rest as against mental activity of any kind, because he has toiled all day for a mere pittance with his stomach half-empty. This situation represents both the challenge and the need for social education in the country. Since the need is ingrained in the fact that there can be no progress social or economic, without work, the challenge has to be taken and the people put through a scheme of functional literacy which will infuse in them a better sense of values and social exertion.
