The literacy rate in rural India recorded a jump of more than 10 per cent points in the past decade, Union Minister of State for Education Jayant Chaudhary claimed in the Lok Sabha on Monday. According to the statistics shared by Chaudhary, rural India's literacy rate rose from 67.77 per cent in 2011 to 77.50 per cent in 2023-24 among individuals aged seven and above. He also claimed that female literacy rose from 57.93 per cent to 70.4 per cent, and male literacy improved from 77.15 per cent to 84.7 per cent. "In order to improve the literacy rate including rural literacy rate among adults in the country, Government of India has launched many Centrally Sponsored Schemes/Programmes from time to time like Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (2018-19 to 2025-26), Saakshar Bharat (2009-10 to 2017-18), Padhna Likhna Abhiyan(2020-21 to 2021-22) and ULLAS-Nav Bharat Saaksharta Karyakram/NILP(2022-23 to 2026-27) resulting in positive outcomes," he said. In his written response, he also talked about a centrally sponsored scheme called Nav Bharat Saksharta Karyakram (NILP), popularly known as 'ULLAS: Understanding of Lifelong Learning for All in Society'. The scheme, aligned with NEP 2020, targets adults (aged 15 years and above) who couldn’t go to school and focuses on rural areas, educationally backward areas, women etc. The scheme is implemented in a hybrid mode, States/UTs have flexibility in offline, online, or combined approaches, he said. He also shared that a dedicated ULLAS Mobile App has been developed for registering learners and volunteer teachers and also enables teaching learning process by providing access to primers in 26 languages. He claimed that two crore learners have already appeared in the Literacy Test named Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Assessment Test (FLNAT) across the country. "Maharashtra is also implementing the scheme and more than 10.87 lakh learners have been registered under the ULLAS scheme. The State has conducted its First FLNAT in which more than 4 Lakh Learners have appeared in the examination. The state Bihar has not implemented the ULLAS scheme yet," he added.
