This is how India is trying to achieve 100 per cent literacy

India is indeed a young country. About 50 per cent of its population of 1.32 billion, according to the World Population Prospects 2017 brought out by the UN, is below the age of 25. Not surprisingly, the growing number of young people especially in the school-going category has resulted in increasing awareness across the country to educate these youngsters. Indeed, the efforts of the government and several other agencies and NGOs have helped ensure school education to millions of youngsters in the country.

According to M. Venkaiah Naidu, the Vice-President of India, the country is committed to implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by all nations at the UN in January 2016. The agenda envisages "a world with universal literacy."

Prakash Javadekar, the Human Resource Development Minister, says that the literacy rate in India has gone up from 18 per cent at the time of Independence in 1947 to 81 per cent now. The government is launching a 'School Chalo Abhiyan' to ensure that the country emerges as 100 per cent literate (and with 100 per cent digital literacy) by 2022.  

Recent changes in the education segment and the dramatic changes being introduced in the sector have started showing a positive impact on primary and secondary education in the country. The Indian government spends nearly Rs800 billion for education, especially primary and secondary.  

Several changes in the recent past have also boosted the primary and secondary education levels in India. According to government figures, the number of enrolment of students in standard VIII doubled from 11 million in 2004-05 to 22 million in 2014-15. With growing awareness about the importance of STEM - Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics - policy-makers are also focussing on these crucial issues while formulating new rules and guidelines.

Increasingly, besides growing realisation within the government about the need to boost primary and secondary education, millions of poor people in India are realising the importance of providing education to their children. This is evident in all major cities - including metros, large cities and smaller towns - with thousands of poor people lining up in long queues to get admission for their children in good schools (most of which offer only English course education).

Many poor people, who can hardly spend much money on their children, are today willing to invest substantial sums in ensuring good school education for their children. Government investments to ensure better education for primary and secondary school students are also increasing rapidly. In his budget presented to the lower house of the Indian Parliament on February 1, 2018, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced an allocation of more than Rs850 billion for the education sector. School education has received a whopping Rs500 billion in the budget, while the balance of Rs350 billion has gone for higher education.

The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, an important programme that aims to universalise elementary education in a time-bound manner, received more than Rs260 billion, while the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan, which aims to enhance secondary education and improve its quality, got Rs42.13 billion.

The government also allocated Rs105 billion for the Mid-day meal scheme.
"We now propose to treat education holistically without segmentation from pre-nursery to Class XII," the finance minister said in his budget speech.

According to him, the government has managed to get children to school, but the quality of education is still a cause for concern. "We now propose to treat education holistically without segmentation from pre-nursery to Class 12."  The government has also launched an integrated B.Ed programme to improve the quality of teachers. "We propose to move gradually from blackboard to digital board," said Jaitley.  

By 2022, every block with more than 50 per cent Scheduled Tribes (ST) population and at least 20,000 tribal people will have 'Ekalavya' schools on par with Navodaya Vidayalas. The government has also proposed the setting up of two new full-fledged Schools of Planning and Architecture. Eighteen new Schools of Planning and Architecture will also be set up in the IITs and NITs as autonomous schools.

The Indian government is also planning to integrate many flagship school schemes including the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) and teacher education.  
The government also aims to provide Rs1 trillion to revitalise the infrastructure of higher educational institutions. Jaitley introduced a new scheme to revitalise infrastructure and systems in education - dubbed RISE (Revitalising Infrastructure and Systems in Education).

A Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA), functioning as a non-banking financial company, will fund the RISE scheme. HEFA, which has a budgetary allocation of Rs2.5 billion, aims to raise a whopping Rs200 billion.

- nithin@khaleejtimes.com

According to government figures, the number of enrolment of students in standard VIII doubled from 11 million in 2004-05 to 22 million in 2014-15.