The biggest threat to our nation is not from terrorists or corrupt politicians. The threat is from the people who are not equipped with the weapon to face societal evils like corruption, child marriage, caste system, poverty, etc. It can be anybody’s guess that the weapon is “Literacy”. All the developed countries are equipped with this weapon, but we are lagging behind. According to census only two-third of us has it. But, even this number consists of a large chunk of people whose educational qualification is insignificant and of poor quality.
The government is surely taking steps to eradicate illiteracy. But with current pace with it will take nearly 20-25 years to reach the 90% level. The situation is even worse in rural India. This pace of educational growth will create a huge gulch between the rural and urban India. Massive urbanization and influence of urbane service sector growth has lead to development getting constrained to cities only. Amidst everyone talking a lot about development of primary education to empower India, we loose focus on the 15 to 20 crore illiterate adult population. Are we simply treating them as burden on our nation who exist just to manage a square meal a day and to increase the population to add to the already dismal condition of our motherland? The answer is ‘NO’. We have to see them as untapped opportunity. We have to see them as potential “Manpower”. We can’t wait for 25 years to turn around the situation. We have to develop newer ways of pedagogy as the traditional methodology is slow.
We can see computer as the tool which will help us in serving India and attain the targeted literacy rate. With specially designed software it’s possible to achieve the goal in 4 to 5 years. This software will be developed to include all the features of a teacher. The task of building this software should be very easy for technocrats. The execution of this project can be on the lines of ITC’s e-choupal. The computer(s) will be owned by a voluntary owned group in the rural community. Some work on these lines is being done by TCS in Andhra Pradesh.
This will surely help in removing the ennui from the schooling process. There is no need of professional teachers, who are already less in number in India. The facilitators need not be expert for this. Simple know-how of handling computer will do. The multimedia program will aid in knowing the exact pronunciation of words, making it independent of the teacher’s competence. This program is required to to treat adults very differently from children. Greater importance must be on reading rather than writing. Once they can follow written instructions other things will automatically fall in line. The process should be of just about 40-50 hours stretch over a month or so. Removing the tests of any sort and shorter duration will reduce the drop-out rate. Nominal fees should be charged as anything free is considered worthless. In future further integration can be made to make India computer literate.
Looking at the massive illiterate population of India this endeavor seems to be a minute one with many holes to be pegged but really optimistic. It needs inputs from energetic minds who can revamp their grey matter to generate innovative ideas and make this a presentable idea in front of our socially conscious corporate houses to generate the required revenue stream.
The government is surely taking steps to eradicate illiteracy. But with current pace with it will take nearly 20-25 years to reach the 90% level. The situation is even worse in rural India. This pace of educational growth will create a huge gulch between the rural and urban India. Massive urbanization and influence of urbane service sector growth has lead to development getting constrained to cities only. Amidst everyone talking a lot about development of primary education to empower India, we loose focus on the 15 to 20 crore illiterate adult population. Are we simply treating them as burden on our nation who exist just to manage a square meal a day and to increase the population to add to the already dismal condition of our motherland? The answer is ‘NO’. We have to see them as untapped opportunity. We have to see them as potential “Manpower”. We can’t wait for 25 years to turn around the situation. We have to develop newer ways of pedagogy as the traditional methodology is slow.
We can see computer as the tool which will help us in serving India and attain the targeted literacy rate. With specially designed software it’s possible to achieve the goal in 4 to 5 years. This software will be developed to include all the features of a teacher. The task of building this software should be very easy for technocrats. The execution of this project can be on the lines of ITC’s e-choupal. The computer(s) will be owned by a voluntary owned group in the rural community. Some work on these lines is being done by TCS in Andhra Pradesh.
This will surely help in removing the ennui from the schooling process. There is no need of professional teachers, who are already less in number in India. The facilitators need not be expert for this. Simple know-how of handling computer will do. The multimedia program will aid in knowing the exact pronunciation of words, making it independent of the teacher’s competence. This program is required to to treat adults very differently from children. Greater importance must be on reading rather than writing. Once they can follow written instructions other things will automatically fall in line. The process should be of just about 40-50 hours stretch over a month or so. Removing the tests of any sort and shorter duration will reduce the drop-out rate. Nominal fees should be charged as anything free is considered worthless. In future further integration can be made to make India computer literate.
Looking at the massive illiterate population of India this endeavor seems to be a minute one with many holes to be pegged but really optimistic. It needs inputs from energetic minds who can revamp their grey matter to generate innovative ideas and make this a presentable idea in front of our socially conscious corporate houses to generate the required revenue stream.
Written By: Vineet Patawari, IIM Indore
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