Date:10/10/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/10/10/stories/2008101053671600.htm

National

Literacy programme to get a boost

Anita Joshua

NEW DELHI: The Union Human Resource Development Ministry has redesigned the National Literacy Mission (NLM) programme to infuse new zeal into it and to check relapse into illiteracy for want of further learning avenues.

‘Lok Talim’ is the name selected by the Ministry for its redesigned programme for basic literacy and continuing education. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s ‘Nai Talim,’ the name seeks to represent India’s composite culture; ‘Lok’ being a Hindi word for people and ‘Talim’ an Urdu word for education.

The Ministry has finalised the contours of the programme and a detailed note for the Expenditure Finance Committee is already in circulation. Since the programme will continue to be volunteer-based like the NLM, the Ministry hopes to be able to implement ‘Lok Talim’ with the funding that has been earmarked for Adult Education in the XI Five Year Plan by the Planning Commission.

Also, not much funding is being sought for setting up physical structures. Wherever possible, the effort will be to use the primary school building or premises of the primary health care centre to conduct classes.

Unlike the NLM — set up 20 years ago — Lok Talim will not have a one-size-fits-all approach. Along with the volunteer-based approach, a variety of options will be available to the programme managers to implement Lok Talim.

Co-existing with the volunteer-based approach will be other instruments like the resident instructor for particularly remote and backward areas. Besides, there are provisions for residential camps of four-month duration for adolescents and weeklong residential camps for 10 months for self-help groups and panchayats to manage the programme.

Also, an attempt will be made to ensure simultaneous availability of programmes for non-literate, semi-literate, neo-literate people and school drop-outs. A key component will be the seamless transition from one phase of literacy to another; making the programme quite akin to mainstream schooling.

Since the NLM has over the recent years become bureaucratic — resulting in people’s representatives getting elbowed out by an “I-manage-you-participate” regime — the effort will be to take the literacy programme back to the people in more ways than one. This has become imperative as the target for the XI Plan is to achieve 85 per cent literacy by 2012; a milestone the Ministry realises can be reached only through people’s participation.