Vice President of India, M. Venkaiah Naidu urged all the stakeholders to come forward and supplement the government’s work in the field of adult education and skill training. Pointing out the need to make every adult literate including digital literacy and financial literacy, today.
While addressing the gathering at the award ceremony of the prestigious Nehru and Tagore Literacy Awards at Indian Adult Education Association (IAEA), New Delhi, Naidu said “It was it was disappointing that despite making great progress in various fields like IT and digitization, India still has the largest number of illiterate persons in the world.”
He called for urgent steps to address it. He said, “The literacy drive should become a people’s movement.”
“Every educated youth in villages and colonies should come forward and teach at least one person from their localities or communities how to write and, how to operate digital devices and how to avail themselves of benefits of government schemes,” he said and termed it as their PSR – Personal Social Responsibility.
‘Each one-teach one’ should not merely remain a slogan, rather it should become a motivating force for the youth, he said.
Naidu also advised the schools to encourage their students to begin adult education drives in their areas on the weekends. “Students should be given some extra marks for such activities,” he said.
The Vice President asked everyone to take an oath to make India an entirely literate and educated country and praised the awardees for their contribution to adult education. “Literacy and education liberate people. They serve as the basic instruments of change and progress,” he said. Apart from illiteracy, he also emphasized the need to address various other challenges on priority such as poverty, urban-rural divide, social discrimination and gender discrimination.
Congratulating the recipients of the Nehru and Tagore Literacy awards, the Vice President hoped that they would continue with their work to realize the vision of a ‘Shikshit aur Samarth Bharat’ – an Educated and Empowered India.
The IAEA has been conferring the Nehru Literacy Award since 1966 and Tagore Literacy Award since 1987 to individuals and institutions that have made noteworthy contributions to the field of education and national development.
