Plan panel to review literacy programme

NEW DELHI, APRIL 2: In a move that is unlikely to win too many friends in the Ministry of Human Resource Development HRD, the Planning Commission will be reviewing the National Literacy Mission NLM as part of its larger, long-overdue goal of tightening the monitoring of education schemes.

Since its inception in 1988, the Planning Commission has not reviewed NLM even once. It has aired its view about the excessive bureaucratisation of the adult literacy programme, but it has yet to formally record that the National Institute of Adult Education NIAE, which was established as a policy-making organisation to aid NLM, be merged with the Directorate of Adult Education DAE. Last year, the budget allocation for adult education, Rs 97 crore, was not fully utilised primarily because DAE allowed Rs 7 crore of its Rs 17 crore budget to lapse. This year, the budget allocation for adult education has risen to Rs 113 crore.

In the past, the Planning Commission has also expressed its displeasure over the creationof the National Literacy Resource Centre, under the aegis of the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, again to aid NLM.

The NLM was last evaluated in 1994 by the Arun Ghosh expert group appointed by the HRD Ministry. The NLM target has been revised from 80 million adult literates by 1995 to 100 million by 1999 and then to 100 million by 2005. As of 1998, 72.55 million people between the age of 15 and 35 have been made literate under the NLM. According to HRD data, 60 per cent of the beneficiaries are women.

Though the HRD Ministry has evolved guidelines to do concurrent evaluation of the NLM campaigns through outside agencies nominated by the State Directorates of Adult Education and 56 agencies now conduct external evaluations, the Planning Commission is not usually not given any of the reports.