Not German or Sanskrit, the real issue is literacy

If a few thousand middle school students in Kendriya Vidyalayas learn German, it makes no difference to the country. If they learn Sanskrit instead, then again it will make no difference. Most middle school students are less inclined to learn a new language, and in any case, most of that learning is by rote. Almost all that was learnt will be forgotten before the students complete their schooling.

The country will be better off if HRD minister Smriti Irani and her advisers stopped bothering about teaching Sanskrit to middle school students. More radical and welcome would be a move to scrap teaching of a third language at middle school level. It will ease the burden on students and they could focus on subjects that are more useful in real life.

As for Irani and the HRD ministry, one of the primary objective should be to improve literacy levels in the country. India has a long way to go before it become a fully literate country and five years is very short to achieve that. But she certainly can raise the literacy level several notches from the current 74 per cent. What she can also ensure is that every household in India has at least one literate member by 2019 and that girls too get a fair chance to get educated – both of which are achievable targets.

India’s literacy statistics are depressing. There are 272.95 million illiterate individuals in the country, according to Census 2011. That’s more than the population of Indonesia, world’s fourth most populous country. More than 64 per cent of the illiterates are females.

The same data also show there are 24.25 million households across India that do not have a single literate member. That’s nearly ten per cent of the 248.86 million households in India. Worse, this includes as many as four pint six million households where four or more illiterate persons over the age of seven years are living together.

Literacy level is the lowest in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, also among the most populous states in the country. Therefore, there is no surprise that 15.6 per cent of all households that do not have a single literate person live in Uttar Pradesh and the 13.9 per cent live in Bihar. States such as West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and undivided Andhra Pradesh also account for a large share of households where there is not a single literate person. Another slicing of the Census 2011 data at state level show that over ten per cent of the households in states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Assam and undivided Andhra Pradesh do not have a single literate member.

Irani would know well that reducing illiteracy is important to bring more people out of poverty, lower inequities in the society and reduce their exploitation by unscrupulous landlords, employers, moneylenders and shopkeepers.

But the very poor may not always understand the value of the education, even where it is accessible, as they are more worried about making ends meet. Some consider sending a child to school a waste of time when the child can supplement the family’s income. There are many other parents who would push young children into hard labour and live off the money the child earns while they sit around idle.

Opening more schools and improving the quality of education alone will not help. The attitude of the poor towards education of the young and the adults need to change and that is a challenge Smriti Irani and the HRD ministry should take up over the next five years to make India a fully literate nation instead of minor issues that grab headlines.