Page 185 - SST Class 08

higher side and will have to plan for their The literacy rates for rural population are the
employment as well. highest in Kerala, followed by Lakshadweep,

g It will have also to plan for training institu- Mizoram, Goa, and Delhi. Fourteen (14) States /
tions and other services required by this age Union Territories have recorded less than 60
group. percent rural literacy rate.
Literacy Level Illiteracy of Adults in India (Aged 15 above)
Literacy and level of education are basic indica- Region/Country Illiteracy (%)
tors of the level of development achieved by a
Male Female
society. Spread of literacy is generally associated
with important traits of modern civilisation such India 29 53
as modernisation, urbanisation, industrialisation, Low Income Countries 28 46
communication and commerce. Literacy forms Middle Income Countries 9 18
an important input in overall development of High Income Countries 3 3
individuals enabling them to comprehend their
Literacy means the ability to read, write and
social, political and cultural environment better
understand a message in any known language.
and respond to it appropriately. Higher levels of
Literacy is directly related to population control,
education and literacy lead to a greater aware-
health and distribution of people. More the
ness and also contributes in improvement of
literacy, less in the birth rate of population, better
economic and social conditions. It acts as a
health and decreasing concentration of popula-
catalyst for social upliftment enhancing the
tion. It is because literate people not only under-
returns on investment made in almost every
stand the advantages of population control, but
aspect of development effort, be it population
have less inclination to have large facilities.
control, health, hygiene, environmental degrada-
Literate people also take resource to better health
tion control, employment of weaker sections of
and avail medical facilities. Similarly, they have
the society.
better mobility and tend to be less concentrated
According to the Census 2001, as many as
at one place. This is quite evident from the table
560,687,797 persons in the country are literate.
following :
Of these 336,533,716 are males and 224,
154,081 are females. While the overall literacy Illiteracy of Adults in India (Aged 15 above)
rate works out to be 64.8 %, the male literacy Region/Country Illiteracy (%)
rate is 75.3% and that for females is 53.7%,
Male Female
showing a gap of 21.6 percentage points
India 29 53
between the sexes at the national level. The gap
Low Income Countries 28 46
is more in the rural areas. In the urban areas,
higher literacy rate has been recorded both for Middle Income Countries 9 18
males and females and the difference among the High Income Countries 3 3
sexes is lower (13 percentage points ). Kerala,
Some inferences from the above table can be
Mizoram, Lakshadweep, Goa and Chandigarh
drawn as under :
occupy the top five positions in literacy while
Both male and female illiteracy is high among
Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu
low income group countries. India’s male and
and Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, Jharkhand,
and Bihar, are at bottom.
Social Science-8 185