Education Problem: High Illiteracy in India

Hello everyone! This article paper aims to evaluate and examine the impact as well as the challenges of high illiteracy in India from 2001 to 2011. Furthermore the researcher delves with focusing on the comparative analysis between the rural and the urban areas in India.

Statement of the Problem

The disparities between the male and female, and urban and rural education in India hinders the development of the nation as a whole.


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Valuing Education

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Without a doubt, education plays a vital role in our lives. Education means a lot everyone’s life as it facilitates our learning, knowledge and skills. Better education is very necessary for all to go ahead in life and get success. In such a competitive world, it is a must for all to have a good education. The importance of education has become the primer in getting good job and position.

Proper education creates great opportunity. In the case of India, soon after their independence in 1947, making education available to all had become a priority for the government. However, there is still high illiteracy rate in India, which catches the attention of me to further investigate in this matter.

High Illiteracy in India



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The problem of illiteracy doesn’t merely rely to the individual itself but it reflects the overall performance of a country as a whole. Literacy determines the economic stability of a state as well as its capacity to enforce the well-being of the people. UNESCO defines functional illiteracy as “measured by assessing reading, writing and mathematical skills in the various domains of social life which influence individual identity and insertion into society. From this perspective, literacy involves not only reading and writing but also the acquisition of the skills necessary for effective and productive performance within society” (UNESCO 2011). According to UNESCO, India is one of the countries who have high illiteracy rate beside Sub-Saharan Africa. It remains to be the main issue that explains the backlogged economy and social condition of India today.

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Given the social diversity of individuals, the imposement of compulsory education has distinct result that differs from various regions in India. Disparities in rural-urban results and gender gaps of illiteracy rate of India are examined by relating and analyzing different statistical data.

Factors of High Illiteracy rate in India

The factors of the illiteracy rate of India can be explained by two connected factors: the population diversity or socio-cultural variances; and the economic conditions

India's Religion

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The socio-cultural factor lies in religion itself. Mainly, India’s population remains to be Hinduism in religion that means the caste system provides individual’s socio-economic conditions; it also determines the rights and prohibitions of the person. However, the degree of influence of religion to the society varies from geographic location; usually it is determined by population distribution of literates from the capital which is identified as urban areas while those that have wider distance from the capital were referred as provinces and rural area in conditions. To say the extent influence of the religion is determined to its closeness to the capital- as it explains the urban areas had set more secular and tolerant environment towards adapting and changing customs for the improvement of the social and economic conditions, while rural areas tends to have strict and rigid influence from religion because traditional societies have higher tendencies to keep its culture intact and preserved over the years.

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Hence the total literacy rate of Indian population comes from urban areas while there is a little contribution to the rural areas. This is further explained as the ‘spatial inequality’ to inter-regional variations. The rural areas: Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra are the remotes and where cultural practices are strictly observed.

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Nearly 46.51% of illiterates are found in 4 states – Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. Around 65% of illiterates are found in 7 states -- Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh (Chart 3)
As the chart above, the disparity of illiteracy rate in rural areas is around 65%. The spatial inequality was the discrepancy of opportunities, budget and access to education that is distributed among the different regions of India.

Women's Status in India

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The disparity of illiteracy in socio-cultural aspects doesn’t limit in geographic location of a province from capital but also to the gender as well. The correlation of the two disparities is observed to the influence Hinduism. There is a great difference of male and female illiteracy to the population living in rural and urban areas. While the highest literacy rates is concentrated in the capital that has most higher budget and funds than the local levels. In most cases, the prevalent high female illiteracy is found in the rural areas since they were compelled and obliged to follow the traditional customs and their society tends to be isolated than that of the urban females.

This also means that people who live in rural areas might have lesser encouragement of attaining higher education; in fact most females are forced and pressured by families to enter marriage at an early age. This explains that woman from the rural areas with less educational attainment are more likely to be oppressed and treated as lower to men. Particular reasons that this prevails especially to lower caste is that investment for woman is expensive and that she still can’t provide for the family and most especially she would have to settle for cheap dowry to his potential husband. While there is much investment to improvement in central urban, the accessibility of education among the rural areas is least developed and that the statuses of women are not elevated in some cases.

Socio-Economic crisis

The socio-economic conditions of the rural areas does not relied overall to the cultural behavior of the people but also to economic conditions that they had to live in less developed rural areas. Illiteracy and poverty are linking factors, since illiteracy causes slow development to a nation; it is also a continuous problem since poverty also hinders the population to high quality education.

The slower progress made in the reduction of the number of non-literate females during the last decade can be attributed to relatively lower participation rate and higher dropout rate of girls at the primary level of education. According to the National Family Health Survey15 (NFHS-2), while 85.2% of boys in the age group 6-10 were attending school, only 78.3% of girls were doing so in 1998-99. In 2000-01, the percentage share of girls in total enrolment at primary level was 43.7. The boys-girls differential in the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) at the primary level was around 19 percentage points.

The Impact of High Illiteracy



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High Illiteracy has a lot of consequences on both socio-cultural and socio-economic aspects. In the socio-cultural, high illiteracy prompts the Indians to be too attached to their religion and culture. Due to illiteracy, parents fail to recognize the benefits of taking children to school. Instead, they forced their children into early marriage. Marriage means raising money through dowry payments to support the rest of the family members. This practice is rampant in areas where a lot of people have not gone to school.

In the socio-economic aspect, high illiteracy is the result of poverty. Illiteracy greatly inhibits the economic and social progress of an individual as well as that of the country. Education gives one the power to seek opportunities and pursue them. People who have gone to school or are well educated have the expertise and intelligence to make good investment decisions and drive the growth agenda of a nation. Illiteracy, therefore, hinders the development of the country.

Illiteracy leads to more poverty. Education equips one with the right skills and expertise for gainful employment. A person who has not gone to school and is unable to read and write may experience a hard time in finding a job especially in a world where the corporate environment is increasingly in demand for employees who are well-trained and can cope with an industry driven by technology. Without a reasonable source of income, taking care of the dependent family members may prove to be difficult.

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Many illiterate people are underpaid, underemployed or unemployed. They are unable to earn enough income to support their needs. Thus, illiterate people live in difficult life. The inability to find gainful employment can subject one to a life of poverty with poor living conditions. And this also resulted to another social problem such as social crimes. Illiterate people engage in unlawful acts in the society due to lack of employment and for survival.

Conclusion



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The problem of the disparities of high illiteracy in India is a great factor as a hindrance to the development of the nation. This problem has a domino effect for it resulted to other social problems in the society. The factors and consequences of high illiteracy is interrelated, it cannot be distinguish if whether poverty resulted to high illiteracy rate, or it is the other way around. Thus, the government in India must address this issue and find solutions to this problem, for the reasons that, India will only develop as a nation if the disparities in education between male and female, and urban and rural will be resolved.

• References

Book

• UNESCO(2010) The Social and Economic Impact of Illiteracy.

PDF/Journal

• http://www.indiacelebrating.com/social-issues/illiteracy
• https://www.oxfamindia.org/education/10-facts-on-illiteracy-in-India-that-you-must-know
• https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-has-a-third-of-worlds-illiterates/articleshow/916814.cms
• http://thecsrjournal.in/myright-independence-from-illiteracy/