The Hindu : National : People have a big role in making literacy plans successful: Sonia

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Friday, Nov 30, 2007
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People have a big role in making literacy plans successful: Sonia

Special Correspondent

‘India, Pakistan, Bangladesh should do more to wipe out illiteracy’

Target to achieve 85 per cent literacy during 11th Plan
“Education is the defining line between haves and have-nots”

— Photo: R.V. Moorthy

CAMPAIGN FOR LITERACY: UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Sri Lanka President’s wife Shiranthi Rajapaksa at the inauguration of a UNESCO conference in New Delhi on Thursday.

NEW DELHI: With the sub-continent accounting for the world’s largest mass of illiterates, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh should redouble their efforts to eradicate illiteracy, United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi said here on Thursday.

Inaugurating a regional conference of the UNESCO on “Addressing the Literacy Challenge in South, South-West and Central Asia: Building Partnerships and Promoting Innovative Approaches” here, Ms. Gandhi said India was conscious of the fact that illiteracy of the scale prevalent in the country was unacceptable.

Describing literacy as the cornerstone of national progress, Ms. Gandhi said India had increased its public spending on education. She, however, pointed out that the success of any literacy programme hinged on people’s active participation.

Minister for Human Resource Development Arjun Singh said the challenge was not just finding the means but having commitment and perseverance to address the problem. Literacy had to be brought to the centre stage of the comity of nations. India had set itself a target of achieving 85 per cent literacy by the end of the 11th Five Year Plan.

UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura lauded India for its “remarkable strides” and “noteworthy progress” in lettering its people.

He said gender disparity remained an area of concern in South, South-West and Central Asia.

Girls accounted for 66 per cent of out-of-school children in the sub-region; the highest share worldwide.

Universal literacy was a moral and development imperative, Mr. Matsuura said: “Yet, the international community has given little attention to literacy tending to focus instead on universal primary education and gender equality.”

Delivering the keynote address, Magsaysay Award winner and chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights Shanta Sinha said education was the defining line between the haves and have-nots. Describing the National Literacy Mission as an endeavour that brought literacy to the centre-stage of Indian democracy, she stressed the need to ensure that it remained there.

The Delhi conference is the fourth in the series of such meetings — covering the Arab States, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean — being organised by the UNESCO as a follow-up to the White House Conference on Global Literacy in September 2006.

Of all the regional conferences, the Delhi meet assumes significance because of the sheer number of illiterates in the sub-continent. Apart from the deliberations, the conference has a ‘Fair of Best Practices’ to showcase the successful literacy programmes of the participating countries in a bid to pool resources in the global fight against illiteracy to meet the Millennium Development Goal of a lettered world by 2015.

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