Prime Minister of India - Dr. Manmohan Singh

PM's remarks at the Lecture by Amartya Sen on 'Centrality of Literacy'

I am delighted to be here today to listen to my school friend Amartya Sen. I am glad that Pratichi Trust, Asian Development Research Institute, Patna and the National Literacy Mission, have jointly hosted this unique event.

The subject of Amartya's lecture today is "The Centrality of Literacy. The human race shares with many other living beings the ability to communicate orally. But communicating through the written word is an ability unique to humankind. The centrality of literacy to human society is, therefore, easily established.

However, what has taken economists more time to appreciate is the centrality of literacy and education to economic and social development and empowerment of people. I have often drawn attention to the simple statistic that there is no modern industrial nation that does not have a minimum of 80 per cent literacy.

It is in this context not a very good commentary on our priorities in development that even at the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, which we so proudly hail as the "Knowledge Century", a quarter to a third of our people remain "illiterate". It is even more unfortunate that a strong gender bias against women persists in the spread of literacy.

To make India fully literate and to eliminate the gender bias in literacy therefore must be our immediate priority goals.

When one looks around the world and studies the history of the promotion of universal literacy it is clear that a combination of governmental intervention and support and civil society mobilization has always worked best. Consider the example of Kerala, where literacy rates have been high for a long time. Kerala's achievement is a testimony to the good work done both by successive governments and by a range of civil society movements, religious institutions and non-governmental organizations.

The challenge before us in India, therefore, is to seek a productive collaboration between government and civil society organizations like Pratichi Trust to implement durable strategies for universal literacy and mass education.

It is in recognition of this centrality of literacy that the Late Shri Rajiv Gandhiji launched the National Literacy Mission in 1988. This Mission mode approach helped India record the highest decadal rate of growth of literacy of 12 percentage points between 1991-2001. During this period, the increase in the literacy rate amongst our women was higher than that for men. The vulnerable sections of our society like the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes also recorded faster growth of literacy during this decade.

The unprecedented social and political empowerment of these sections in the recent period can be attributed in part to this faster growth of literacy among them. Many affirmative actions for the welfare and empowerment of the marginalized sections of our country have got consolidated through the spread of the literacy movement.

Despite these significant gains, we still have a very long way to go. According to UNESCO's Global Monitoring Report 2006, out of 771 million illiterates in the world, 268 million are estimated to be residing in our country, which accounts for nearly one-third of the world's non-literates. Even though India's GDP has recorded very high growth rate in the recent past, the inferior literacy status of our country has contributed to the lowering of our position in the UNDP's human development index.

Our Government has taken a series of important steps in the past six years to make the light of literacy and education shine for every child, every citizen - irrespective of gender, caste or religion.

We have placed special emphasis on the funding and implementation of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, for the age group of 6-14 years. For removing adult illiteracy we launched the 'Saakshar Bharat' programme last year with a special focus on female literacy. In launching 'Saakshar Bharat', the government has acknowledged that adult education is as important as formal education.

It is our government's commitment that paucity of funds will not be allowed to limit the spread of literacy and education in our country. It is on the foundation of this fiscal commitment and political resolve that we went to Parliament and added a new Fundamental Right to our Constitution - the Right to Education.

My friend Amartya knows this very well, that I am what I am today because of the investment that my family and my country made in my education. There are millions of Indians like me who enter their adulthood with no other asset than education. But, what an asset education is. It is the most important differentiator, the most effective multiplier.

Education is, of course, far more than mere literacy. But it is literacy that stirs in our soul the unending search for knowledge. Alphabets are the building blocks of human civilization.

I sincerely hope that we in India can pool our energies together to ensure that every one of our citizen is awakened by the light of literacy and empowered by the energy of education.

I thank my cabinet colleague Shri Kapil Sibal and all others who have been associated with this programme for inviting me here today. I thank my friend Amartya for sharing with us his wisdom and knowledge, of which I have been a lifelong beneficiary.