Bihar ropes in 11 lakh students to educate 1.2 cr adults

In a bid to eradicate illiteracy in Bihar, the state government has decided to rope in 10.5 lakh class IX and X students to educate 1.2 crore adult illiterate people in Bihar.

The plan will be executed under a five-month literacy campaign ‘‘Sakshar Bharat Yojana’’ to be launched from November 11 next, according to an HRD official.

Under the proposal, as many as 10.50 lakh class IX and X students will be co-opted as volunteers to teach basic reading and writing skills to the illiterate people in Bihar, Principal Secretary (HRD) Anjani Kumar Singh told PTI.

The fruits of the students’ labour in imparting basic education to their illiterate brothers will not go unrewarded as they stood to gain 10 marks in the social science subject in the matriculation examination, he said.

The HRD will launch campaign throughout the state to tap volunteers from the government high schools and impart them basic training to finetune their teaching skills to undertake the task of tutoring illiterate people, Singh said.

Each student volunteer will be tasked to teach 10-12 illiterate persons.

The HRD has also set rolling an administrative infrastructure for implementation and monitoring of the Sakshar Bharat Yojana in Bihar with as many as 250 trainers undergoing an intense training programme at the Directorate of Adult Education for Kendra resource person, he said.

These KRPs will provide training to the panchayat level motivators at the public training centres which will be set up soon at all panchayats in the state, the HRD official said.

A male and a female motivator have been appointed at each panchayat with an honorarium of Rs 2,000 to motivate the illiterate people to learn basic reading and writing skills under the Sakshar Bharat Yojana, he said.

The panchayat-level motivators must have basic knowledge of computers to feed data regarding the number of illiterate adults undergoing literary programme so as funds could be released for sustaining the literacy campaign, Singh said.

Besides, the elected representatives at the grass root level like mukhia and block pramukh will supervise the adult literacy programme, Singh said.

The official said that any wrongdoing on the part of the KRPs, motivators and volunteers (students) will be easily detected as the central government will be directly monitoring the Sakshar Bharat Yojana.

The Sakshar Bharat Yojana will be launched in 35 districts of Bihar on 11 November next to achieve cent percent adult literacy in the state, he said.

PTI