Mass Education: The Current State of Affairs

There is a growing realisation that the society cannot prosper and reach

its ultimate potential until and unless the members of the society are educated.

Today the governments across the globe are working meticulously to ensure that

the citizenry are educated. In India also, the illiteracy rate had been a matter of

grave concern for the policy makers and accordingly since its independence the

respective governments have given due attention to improve the situation. In a

country with such a huge diversity- linguistic, cultural, religious and ethnic,

achieving the objective of best literacy rate was no less than a herculean task.

Added to that was the diversity in the age group of the people. Therefore, the

literacy drive had to be conducted not only for the minor and children but also

the adults.

The constitutional framework in India provides for the quasi-federal

structure with distribution of powers between the union and states. Under these

circumstances the enforcement of such a literacy drive required not only a

robust policy framework but also proper coordination and cooperation between

the governments at the centre and the states. After seven decades of its

independence, the scenario in India is far from satisfactory.

There has to be proper introspection for identification of the loopholes in

the implementation programme. Out of its 29 States, some have outperformed

the national average, there are many states whose performance have been very
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disappointing. The research paper argues that instead of indulging in a blame

game, our focus should be shifted on the reorientation of the programme

towards achieving the objective of the cent percent literacy rate. Over the past

seven decades there has been remarkable development in the country. Many

NGOs have been established and many of them have played a pivotal role in

literacy campaign. This is high time that the success stories of such NGOs

should be narrated to the other stake holders so that there can be initiatives in

the society. Apart from the NGOs working at the different level there is a huge

pool of retired personnels in India, from the teachers to the armed force

personals. They are highly motivated and their huge potentials remain untapped.

These motivate people are always ready and willing to serve the nation in

whatever capacity possible. The policy makers in the country, fighting against

all odds have been carrying out the mission of increasing the literacy rate. There

has to be assessment and overhauling of the entire machinery.

Funding is a major concern for any social welfare scheme and literacy

campaign is no exception to it. It is for the respective agencies to generate

revenues and funds from all quarters. Government has introduced the scheme of

educational cess to create a revenue pool specifically dedicate to this very

purpose. It is ironical that major chunk of the money accumulated in the

exchequer’s revenue through collection of education cess remains unspent.

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 This ought to be a matter of grave concern, but in a democratic setup like

India, these issues are never the major issues in the democratic process. The

society has to change its priority.

It is not that the campaign has been only a failure. It has achieved certain

objectives but they are piecemeal.