Question

Literacy rate is not same throughout the country. Do you agree? Give reason

Answer 1

yes i agree becuz the i.q. of all person is not equal to each other and thats the reason some countries ha good literacy rate and some have bad...

Answer 2

India's literacy rate is at 74.04%. Kerala has achieved a literacy rate of 93.91%. Bihar is the least literate state in India, with a literacy of 63.82%.

If we try to analyze the literacy rates and poverty levels in various states, a very interesting pattern emerges.

It is well known that poverty results in increased levels of school dropouts because families in poor economic conditions rather prefer that their children help in augmenting income. Consequently, school dropouts result in illiteracy and illiteracy definitely does not aid in poverty alleviation.

Thus the vicious cycle of illiteracy and poverty continues. Let’s analyze how serious is this vicious cycle in India. The plot of illiteracy versus percentage of people below the poverty line shows a clear relationship between illiteracy and poverty (see Chart A below). As you can clearly observe, higher levels of poverty implies higher levels of illiteracy.

There are three distinct clusters in this chart. Such clustering is performed in a scientific manner using a Statistical method called K-Means.

The first cluster (Cluster 1) is one with poverty levels and illiteracy that are higher than the norm. Some of the states in this cluster namely, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha are populous states. In fact, the states in this cluster represent a whopping 42% of India’s population. So in summary one can say that amongst 42% of India’s population, higher levels of poverty is driving illiteracy.

Other interesting observations can be made if we try to analyze the literacy rates by age groups for the general category of population, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (see Chart B below).

The gap in literacy rates for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes exist in all age groups and gets more pronounced with higher age groups.

This is somewhat expected because we know that a larger proportion of elderly people an illiterate as compared to the younger generation. What is troubling though is that even for the younger population, literacy amongst the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes is lagging behind the general population quite considerably. Take for instance the age group 25-29.

This is the age when most people start their career and unfortunately, in this very age group, the literacy rates amongst the Scheduled Castes is 10% lower than the general category. For the Scheduled Tribes, the corresponding gap is 20%. Let me point out that in India, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes represent 25% of the population and therefore, such differentials in literacy rates are definitely not helping the cause of inclusive growth.