India will be 100% literate by 2022: Javadekar

New Delhi: In a significant move aimed at eradicating illiteracy from the country, the government has set a target to achieve 100 percent literacy by 2022. In an exclusive interview with Millennium Post, Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar has said that the HRD ministry is working on a module to accomplish the 100 percent literacy target by motivating schoolchildren to teach their parents if they are illiterate, or any other family member.

Aiming to make it a mass movement, the HRD Ministry has planned to launch the campaign with the tagline Khud Pado, Parivar Padao after the completion of a module which is in the final stage.

While slamming then Congress-led government at the Centre, Javadekar said, "Different literacy programmes are running in the country for the last several years, and even after 70 years of the Independence, about nine crore people are still illiterate in the country, which is a matter of great concern."

"We have decided to eradicate illiteracy innovatively. As most of the children have started going to school, they would be encouraged to teach their family members, parents with the help of simplified teaching modules," Javadekar said.

"The HRD Ministry is developing a training module for schoolchildren who would be ready by this year-end," Javadekar said, adding that the module would be for students of Class 6 to Class 12.

In reply to a question about the plans to motivate schoolchildren, Javadekar said, "We are mulling to provide incentives to children, who would come forward to teach their parents or any known illiterate person. The method would help in building confidence among parents or known persons to learn basics of education from their sons or daughters."

The module, which is set to be ready by this year-end, would have study material, training kits, etc. and it would be distributed among knowledge seekers. The schoolchildren would also be exposed to different training methods at their schools.

The definition of literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with different contexts.

At present, India's literacy rate is about 74 percent, with Kerala achieving a maximum literacy rate of 93 percent and Bihar being the least literate state with a 63 percent literacy rate. See P7