Figure Watch

Illiterate India

Almost 50 per cent of the Indian population cannot read and write a simple sentence on everyday life. This probably won’t surprise most of us. However, a chart published in ILO’s Key Indicators of the Labour Market 1999 — that picks up a few countries each from the developed countries, transition economies, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa and Middle East and North Africa — gives India the dubious distinction being the second largest country in terms of illiteracy from its selection. India is next only to Guinea-Bissau. Our country has more illiterates than Botswana, Rwanda and Uganda.Even as the number of persons below the poverty line are said to be down to around 30 per cent, the ILO statistics reveals that development is bypassing more than half the Indian population.