A high level meeting was called by the Chief Secretary today

A high level meeting was called by the Chief Secretary today in his office with senior officials from various concerned department including Principal Secretary, Social Welfare, Mr.Sunil Kumar, Mr. Amarnath Verma State Director, Adult literacy, Secretary, Higher Education Mr. Arvind Narayan Mishra, Basic Education, Mr. Hiralal Gupta and representatives from Global Dream led by Dr Sunita Gandhi, lead Faciliator-Worker and Dr JB Pattanaik, Chairperson, India literacy Board.

An analysis of the present situation of illiteracy in UP was presented by Dr Sunita Gandhi. She said, “There are 60 million illiterates in UP of which vast majority are women. If we look at the growth rate in literacy over the last decades and project it forwards, it will take 30-40 years to make Uttar Pradesh literate.

Therefore, more of the same approach to countering illiteracy is not enough.” She presented the case for Global Dream which has the advantage of speed, motivation, flexibility, self-led learning and involvement of every community member to make a quick impact so that UP can be made literate within 2 years.

Mr Amarnath Verma of Adult literacy, when asked to explain reason for a two year gap in receiving money from the NlM, he said the money remained unspent for the last two years because of which we could not get further funds. Chief Secretary further asked all the present to submit a plan as to what could be done from their own department’s view to counter illiteracy in Uttar Pradesh and submit to him at the earliest possible.

Mr. Alok Ranjan, who has written a book ‘Towards Adult literacy in India’ said “It is indeed possible to make UP literate within two years if we make literacy into a people’s movement just like Ernakulum in Kerala. When there is a good collaboration between civil societies and the government, the mission will succeed. We are going to do it and we will.”

Global Dream is a project of DEVI Sansthan, a non-profit since 1992. In May, 150 lucknow schools participated in its campaign, ‘Each One Reach and Teach At least One.’ This provided both validity to the Campaigns method of teaching and to the mission’s possibility of being scaled up as little children of Class III and up could teach anyone.

Mr. Sunil Kumar, Principal Secretary, Social Welfare said, “If we go through the national literacy mission way, it may take another 2 years to get approvals. If we want to move a lot faster, we may have to copy the modalities like the pulse polio campaign where all stakeholders joined together with civil societies and the government worked together hand in hand. We may also need to connect with the avenues like Samajawadi Pension Yojana in which 40 lakhs people are currently enrolled, out of which many may be illiterate and brought under the literacy program. There is a Rs 50 per month incentive attached to this scheme if the person is literate.”

An important outcome of the meeting was the Chief Secretary becoming chairman of the Global Dream literacy Mission with Dr. JB Pattnaik as its Co-Chair and Dr. Sunita Gandhi as its General Secretary along with existing 66 members of the Board Advisory of Global Dream which includes people from all walk of life.