A national-level meeting to discuss the plan of action with representatives of various states for the ‘Saakshar Bharat’ Mission concluded here on Friday.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the meeting, Anshu Vaish, secretary, School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Human Resource Development, said that the meeting was aimed at brining the Centre and the partnering states on the same page.
“According to the 2001 Census, about 30 crore people in the country are illiterate. The ‘Saakshar Bharat’ Mission aims at providing basic literacy to seven crore people by 2012. Of these, 6 crore will be women,” Ms. Vaish said.
“Basic literacy,” including reading, writing and basic arithmetic was considered to be the level of literacy that a student who has passed class III has. “While the broad framework to achieve our target is the same for all the states, they could device their own strategies within the framework,” she said.
As many as 365 districts across 19 states in the country have been identified for attention as part of the Mission. Of these, seven are in Tamil Nadu and 5 of those would receive immediate attention.
“Besides familiarising the state governments with the overall objective and framework, this meeting is also an effort to put in place smooth fund flow mechanism,” Ms. Vaish said.
While the total sanction for Tamil Nadu to carry out this initiative over a period of three years is Rs.125 crore, an initial amount of Rs.12 crore has been set aside to be shared by the Centre and the State in the ratio 75:25.
Convened by the National Literacy Mission Authority (NLMA) with the support of the Directorate of Non Formal and Adult Education here, the meeting had education secretaries and officials of the School Education Departments of as many as 19 states.
