Growth in Indian literacy levels is slowing down: Time for innovative solutions: Opportunity for social entrepreneurs and NGO's

More about that in a minute. Lets first see what the data tells us.

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datasource - unesco.org
definitions: Youth - 15 to 24 years, adults - 15 years +

Now to the worrying parts. Eight yers into the current decade, we are seing a noticeable slowdown in growth of literacy rates. In Young males, growth in literacy rates is a quarter of what it was and adult males it has slowed down to a third of the previous decade. Amongst females, growth in literacy rates have halved.

Given that a few states have done exceptionally well when it comes to literacy, the actual slowing down is more acute than what the average shows. It is not as if this slowdown is because we have achieved internationally acceptable levels. Even amongst young males, we are still about 10 % below the best.

The opportunity
It is not as if there is no investment being made into improving literacy levels. Significant investmenst continue to be made both by the goverment and the development sectors. What we need are solutions that are easily scalable and can reach out to dispersed audiences at their convenience and in consonance with their culture.

The opportunity space continues to be huge, and so do the challenges.

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Growth in Indian literacy levels is slowing down: Time for innovative solutions: Opportunity for social entrepreneurs and NGO's
written by Dolly Bhasin, July 20, 2009

Mr. Krishna Kumar, I think not enough homework has been done on this article and it does not do justice to a Cybermedia Publication. With spelling errors, graph mistakes and not a very good summation of the wonderful UNESCO report. Kindly correct the same.
However, the issue raised is so valid and I fully subscribe to it i.e. "Time for innovative solutions: Opportunity for social entrepreneurs and NGO's"
I may care to add - please include consultants and media to your list apart from Entrepreneurs & NGOs.

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i tink
written by Iqbal Sarejevo, March 11, 2009

this is a graph. i tink they kneed to kno how to write and spell

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Re: Couple of things wrong
written by Krishna Kumar, November 09, 2008

Hi,

It is because the graph shows the points as equidistant that I have given the data in the table immediately afterwards. The analysis comes out of this table and not from just the graph.

The data source is single, UNESCO as I have mentioned in the beginning

Hope that that clarifies the two points you raised

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Literacy Rates -trend
written by K N Unni, November 06, 2008

There are a couple of things that are wrong in the data presented.

First the graph: It shows data for 1981,1991,2001,2005,5006 and 2007 as if these points are equidistant when they are not. So the trend-line represented by the graph is wrong.

Then the data: It seems that data from different sources have been brought together to show the change. These may not be showing the correct picture or may be underestimating the growth in literacy rate.

However, an observation appears to be extremely important - the regional imbalances. some states have been doing well and others continue to be laggards. This needs to be corrected

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