EDUCATION-INDIA: Literacy Changes the Face of Poverty

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sudhamahi Regunathan

NEW DELHI, Mar 9 1998 (IPS) - Election day this time was heady and memorable for Santosh, Roopmati, Harvati and Kamla Devi — women from slums in the Indian capital who have learnt how to read and write only over the last year.

For the first time, they signed their names on the voters list, firmly pushing away the ink pad election officials quite automatically put before them so they could put their thumb impressions on the list.

“I signed before casting my vote,” said forty-something Santosh, beaming with satisfaction. “This election has been very meaningful for me.”

Her neighbour Shashi laughingly recalled how “stunned” the official was by the numbers of women from their slum who were asking for pens to sign their names. “He first refused to give me a pen, he couldn’t believe I was able to sign,” she said.

According to Roopmati, a long-time sweeper in the Delhi Municipal Corporation, their new found skill however seems to alarm some people. She explained that at work, neo-literate employees of the Corporation had to fight for the right to sign.

“When I went to collect my salary a few months ago, the accountant made fun of me for insisting that I wanted to sign. Then he impatiently said he had no record of my signature. It was only when we fought back that officials relented,” she said.

A programme for raising literacy levels in the Indian capital run by the state government has been changing the lives of men and women in the capital’s shanty-settlements and low income neighbourhoods. India has the world’s highest illiterate population.

Officials claim that nearly half of the capital’s official illiterate population of 900,000 had mastered the three R’s — reading, writing and arithmetic — in the first phase of the Delhi Sarva Siksha literacy programme started in 1996.

The programme, run entirely by volunteers, has enrolled 150,000 students in the ongoing second phase. Some of the volunteers are themselves new literates, beneficiaries of other projects run by the government and non-government organisations.

Take Shiela Panchal, in her late forties, who has completed both her basic literacy and post literacy courses and has started holding classes herself. “What I had gained I wanted to share and my children help me,” she said.

And that, she explained, was not just reading and writing but also the power of knowledge to fight exploitation and being manipulated.

“I have learnt the power of the state and the rights of the individual,” she said. “Armed with this, I am able to take up the problems of people in Sagarpur, where I am now very well known.”

She recalled that one time when a child fell from the terrace of his house, scared neighbours stayed away because they did not want to be involved in a police case. Panchal who was informed, rushed the child to hospital and informed the police. “I could do this because I understood the working of the law, my limitations and my responsibilities,” she explained.

She aims to set up an organisation for raising awareness of people’s rights, and to mobilise support on issues that concern working class people like her. Panchal confides that she would also like to enter politics, because only political power would give her the opportunity to make a real change.

Literacy has opened new doors for hundreds of poor people. Harvati, who lives in a sea of shanties clinging precariously to the banks of Delhi’s river Yamuna, says she set up a small shop as soon as she mastered simple arithmetic.

“Once I learnt to add and subtract and recognise alphabets, I set up a small shop outside my jhuggi (hut),” the enterprising woman said. “I began by selling vegetables which I bought early in the morning from the wholesale market. Now I sell everything that you require in a kitchen.

“Business is good, because people know I do not cheat them, and I also give credit, which I can because I am able to keep accounts,” she added.

Jagmati has taken over her husband’s small business, enabling him to diversify. “I run his tailoring shop … taking measurements, dealing with customers. Business is going well,” she said.

Though most beneficiaries of the literacy programme are women, men have also enrolled. Says Hamid Ali, who came from the eastern

state of Bihar five years ago, and was struggling to make ends meet as a milk man, “after learning to read and write, I have started doing better business. Customers can’t cheat me, and I am working towards setting up a dairy.”

Learning to save has been an important lesson learnt in the literacy classes. With their new found skill, most new learners opened post office savings accounts, after finding out all the details.

Often women don’t even tell their husband’s they are saving, for fear that they would drink away the money. Kamla Devi of Nangloi points out that earlier her husband was able to make out from the ink stain on her thumb that she had put away money in the bank. “Now I can sign my name, I have 1,000 rupees in my account, and he doesn’t know,” she gleefully admits.

Women like Santosh, Roopmati, Harvati and Kamla Devi have discovered all kinds of opportunities through their ability to read, write and count.