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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Census 2011 India: Three out of four Indians can read and write now

Census 2011 India: Three out of four Indians can read and write now

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published Published on Apr 1, 2011   modified Modified on Apr 1, 2011
India's effective literacy rate has recorded a 9.2% rise to reach 74.04%, according to provisional data of the 2011 census released on Thursday.

Even as there was a sense of achievement at the improvement in the literacy rate, questions are being raised about what constitutes literacy and the real import of the continued high gender gap.

Literacy rate improved sharply among females as compared to males. While the effective literacy rate for males rose from 75.26% to 82.14%, marking a rise of 6.9%, it increased by 11.8% for females to go from 53.67% to 65.46%. The gap of 21.59 percentage points recorded between male and female literacy rates in 2001 census reduced to 16.68 percentage points in 2011. The Planning Commission had set up a target of reducing this gap to 10 percentage points by 2011-12.

"This is good news, but a lot more work needs to be done. The gender gap is still large, at 17%. This is a cause for concern given that this decade has seen a lot of investment in girls education. Age-wise data is likely to show that the improvement in female literacy is on the back of the elementary education programmes," Malini Ghose of Nirantar, a NGO working in the area of education.

Eleven states and Union Territories have recorded literacy rates below the national average of 74.04%. This include Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. Over the last decade these states have improved literacy rates anywhere by 6.2% to 24%. While Bihar is the most laggard, at a literacy rate of 63.8%, it has made substantial improvement over its Census 2001 performance of 47%.

The most impressive gain was made by Jharkhand, which improved on its Census 2001 figure of 53.6%. The state's literacy rate according to the provisional numbers announced on Thursday is 67.6%. Former education secretary Anil Bordia said that far from a cause for celebration, the figure are a "cause for distress".

"The factor that makes the difference is female literacy," Bordia explains his unease with the figures. "Take Rajasthan, the male literacy rate is 80.51%, while the female literacy rate is 52.66%. This is a huge gap," the former education secretary said. He said that there is overlap in the states where the literacy rate is below the national average and where the school drop out rate is high.

Effective literacy rate in the 2001 census was 64.83%, which improved to 74.04%. Registrar General of India and Census Commissioner C Chandramauli said it was encouraging to note that out of total 217,700,941 literates added during the decade, females at 110,069.001 outnumbered males at 107,631,940. A significant milestone reached in 2011 census was the decline of illiterates by 31,196,847.

Bordia raises the question of what constitutes literacy. "Respondents are asked if they are literate, and how they became literate. That is not the way to do this. They need to be asked to read and write. Also it is time we reviewed the definition of literacy, to include mathematics. This base level of literacy doesn't change a person's life, except give a little more confidence."

The Economic Times, 1 April, 2011, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/census-2011-india-three-out-of-four-indians-can-read-and-write-now/articleshow/7840332.cms


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