Even as the standard of education in Government schools has been deteriorating in different parts of Keonjhar, the home district of present School and Mass Education Minister Badri Narayan Patra, education programmes like the Saakshar Bharat Mission has failed due to lack of interest of the district administration.
The Saakshar Bharat programme was launched by the Government of India on September 8, 2009 to impart functional literacy and numeracy to 70 million illiterates of 15 years age and above. The programme was launched in Odisha by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on February 28, 2011 at Junagarh, Kalahandi.
A total of 410 districts in India including 19 of Odisha where female literacy is less than 50 per cent were identified under the Saakshar Bharat Mission. In the first phase of the programme was implemented in the State’s three districts, Kalahandi, Sundargarh and Balangir while it was extended to other districts including Keonjhar three years ago.
The programme is implemented by the structure with the National literacy Mission at the Centre, the State literacy Mission under the Mass Education Department, the District Sakhyarata Samiti headed by Collector, Block lok Sikshya Samiti, Panchayat lok Sikhya Samiti and village lok Sikhya Kendra in each village.
In Keonjhar, 13 Block loksikhya Samitis are formed to monitor the activities in 236 panchyats. Two District Coordinators are engaged in the district level, but block coordinators are yet to be engaged. In all, 436 Prerak volunteers out of 572 required have been shortlisted to work in different gram panchayats. Volunteer teachers are said to be working at the village level.
Surprisingly, no training of DC/BC/Preraks has been conducted; and no learning kits have been distributed in the district yet. Even, no payments have been made to coordinators and Preraks resulting resentment among them. Without running learning centres, evaluation of neo literates was done in several places of the district and certificates were given claiming achievements under the Saakshar Bharat Mission.
The District Education Officer has admitted the non-nutilisation of the funds received for the purpose, for which there is slow progress of the programme. Already, an unspent fund of about Rs 1 crore received by the District Sakhyarata Samiti was left surplus after the end of the literacy campaign in 1994; and now, additional huge funds are lying unspent due to negligence of the authorities.
Moreover, several assets of the District Sakhyarata Samiti have disappeared from its store earlier as none of the authorities never found time to review, inspect or monitor the affairs of the Samiti, resulting in the failure of the programme.