Percentage of 3rd grade students in rural India who can not afford to read words, 2007-2014; Graphic courtesy: The Times of India, March 1, 2016

Percentage of 5th grade students in rural India who can not do basic subtraction; Graphic courtesy: The Times of India, March 1, 2016

Proportion of male and female literates in Bhutan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the world in 2015; Graphic courtesy: The Times of India, November 20, 2015

This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. You can help by converting these articles into an encyclopaedia-style entry, deleting portions of the kind normally not used in encyclopaedia entries. Please also fill in missing details; put categories, headings and sub-headings; and combine this with other articles on exactly the same subject. Readers will be able to edit existing articles and post new articles directly on their online archival encyclopædia only after its formal launch. See examples and a tutorial.

Statistics, gender – wise

2005-21

Literacy in India, gender – wise, 2005-21
From: June 24, 2024: The Times of India

See graphic:

Literacy in India, gender – wise, 2005-21

Statistics, state-wise

National literacy, 1951-2011

June 4, 2019: The Times of India

All India literacy, 1951-2011
From: June 4, 2019: The Times of India

India May Achieve 100% Literacy Before The Next General Election

With 8 out of every 10 Indians being illiterate at the time, India’s first general election generated enormous global curiosity. Opponents of universal adult suffrage questioned the ability of illiterate voters to cast their vote intelligently and secretly. According to the last census conducted 8 years ago, one-fourth of our population is still illiterate, but we have come a long way from where we started

State-wise literacy, 1951-2001

Source: India Budget.nic.in

States/Union Territories	1951	1961	1971	1981	1991	2001
Andaman & Nicobar Islands	30.30	40.07	51.15	63.19	73.02	81.30
Andhra Pradesh	–	21.19	24.57	35.66	44.08	60.47
Arunachal Pradesh	NA	7.13	11.29	25.55	41.59	54.34
Assam	18.53	32.95	33.94	–	52.89	63.25
Bihar	13.49	21.95	23.17	32.32	37.49	47.00
Chandigarh	–	NA	70.43	74.80	77.81	81.94
Chhattisgarh	9.41	18.14	24.08	32.63	42.91	64.66
Dadra & Nagar Haveli	–	–	18.13	32.90	40.71	57.63
Daman & Diu	–	–	–	–	71.20	78.18
Delhi	NA	61.95	65.08	71.94	75.29	81.67
Goa	23.48	35.41	51.96	65.71	75.51	82.01
Gujarat	21.82	31.47	36.95	44.92	61.29	69.14
Haryana	–	–	25.71	37.13	55.85	67.91
Himachal Pradesh	––––				63.86	76.48
Jammu & Kashmir	–	12.95	21.71	30.64	NA	55.52
Jharkhand	12.93	21.14	23.87	35.03	41.39	53.56
Karnataka	–	29.80	36.83	46.21	56.04	66.64
Kerala	47.18	55.08	69.75	78.85	89.81	90.86
Lakshadweep	15.23	27.15	51.76	68.42	81.78	86.66
Madhya Pradesh	13.16	21.41	27.27	38.63	44.67	63.74
Maharashtra	27.91	35.08	45.77	57.24	64.87	76.88
Manipur2	12.57	36.04	38.47	49.66	59.89	70.53
Meghalaya	NA	26.92	29.49	42.05	49.10	62.56
Mizoram	31.14	44.01	53.80	59.88	82.26	88.80
Nagaland	10.52	21.95	33.78	50.28	61.65	66.59
Orissa	15.80	21.66	26.18	33.62	49.09	63.08
Pondicherry	–	43.65	53.38	65.14	74.74	81.24
Punjab	–	NA	34.12	43.37	58.51	69.65
Rajasthan	8.5	18.12	22.57	30.11	38.55	60.41
Sikkim	–	–	17.74	34.05	56.94	68.81
Tamil Nadu		36.39	45.40	54.39	62.66	73.45
Tripura	NA	20.24	30.98	50.10	60.44	73.19
Uttar Pradesh	12.02	20.87	23.99	32.65	40.71	56.27
Uttarakhand	18.93	18.05	33.26	46.06	57.75	71.62
West Bengal	24.61	34.46	38.86	48.65	57.70	68.64
ALL INDIA2	18.33	28.30	34.45	43.57	52.21	64.84

Notes

1. Literacy rates for 1951, 1961 and 1971 Censuses relate to population aged five years and above. The rates for the 1981, 1991 and 2001 Censuses relate to the population aged seven years and above. The literacy rate for 1951 in case of West Bengal relates to Total population including 0-4 age group. Literacy rate for 1951 in respect of Chhatisgarg, Madhya Pradesh and Manipur are based on sample population.

2. India and Manipur figures exclude those of the three sub-divisions viz. Mao Maram, Paomata and Purul of Senapati district of Manipur as census results of 2001 in these three sub-divisions were cancelled due to technical and administrative reasons.

3. N.A. - Not available as no census was carried out in Assam during 1981 and in Jammu & Kashmir during 1991.

4. Created in 2001. Uttaranchal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh for 1981 and 1991 are included under Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh respectively.

Source: Office of the Registrar General, India

State-wise literacy, 1951

Rank in 1951	State/Union Territory	Percentage of literates
1.	Kerala	47.18
2.	Mizoram	31.14
3.	Andaman & Nicobar Islands	30.30
4.	Maharashtra	27.91
5.	West Bengal	24.61
6.	Goa	23.48
7.	Gujarat	21.82
8.	Uttarakhand	18.93
9.	Assam	18.53
	ALL INDIA	18.33
10.	Orissa	15.80
11.	Lakshadweep	15.23
12.	Bihar	13.49
13.	Madhya Pradesh	13.16
14.	Jharkhand	12.93
15.	Manipur	12.57
16.	Uttar Pradesh	12.02
17.	Nagaland	10.52
18.	Chhattisgarh	9.41
19.	Rajasthan	8.5
	ALL INDIA	18.33

State-wise literacy, 2011

Source: Census 2011

Rank in 2011	State/ UT	Literacy %age
1.	Kerala	94.00
2.	Lakshadweep	91.85
3.	Mizoram	91.33
4.	Goa	88.70
5.	Tripura	87.22
6.	Daman and Diu	87.10
7.	Andaman and Nicobar Islands	86.63
8.	Delhi	86.21
9.	Chandigarh	86.05
10.	Puducherry	85.85
11.	Himachal Pradesh	82.80
12.	Maharashtra	82.34
13.	Sikkim	81.42
14.	Tamil Nadu	80.09
15.	Nagaland	79.55
16.	Uttarakhand	78.82
17.	Gujarat	78.03
18.	Manipur	76.94
19.	West Bengal	76.26
20.	Dadra and Nagar Haveli	76.24
21.	Punjab	75.84
22.	Haryana	75.55
23.	Karnataka	75.36
24.	Meghalaya	74.43
	India	74.04
25.	Orissa	72.87
26.	Assam	72.19
27.	Chhattisgarh	70.28
28.	Madhya Pradesh	69.32
29.	Uttar Pradesh	67.68
30.	Jammu and Kashmir	67.16
31.	Andhra Pradesh	67.02
32.	Jharkhand	66.41
33.	Rajasthan	66.11
34.	Arunachal Pradesh	65.38
35.	Bihar	61.80
	India	74.04

State-wise literacy, 2017-18

September 7, 2020: The Times of India

Literacy rates for those aged 7 or more (%), as in 2017-18.
From: September 7, 2020: The Times of India

At 66%, Andhra’s literacy rate worst, Delhi’s 2nd best at 89% Smaller States Do Better Than ‘Developed’ Ones

Which state has a higher literacy rate – Andhra Pradesh or Bihar, Telangana or Assam, Karnataka or Uttarakhand? If you picked the southern state each time, you were completely wrong and by a considerable margin. The reality is that Andhra Pradesh’s rate of 66.4% is the worst among all states in India and significantly lower than Bihar’s 70.9%. Similarly, Telangana’s 72.8% is well below the national average of 77.7% while Assam is well above it at 85.9% and Karnataka’s 77.2% pales in comparison to Uttarakhand’s 87.6%, which is bettered only by Kerala and Delhi among the major states and UTs. Data from a report on education released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) reveals these counter-intuitive truths and shows that, at least when it comes to literacy, notions of “developed states” can be misleading.

Gap between male & female literacy smallest in Kerala

The data is for 2017-18 and is for all aged 7 or more. Not all preconceptions are wrong though. Kerala remains by some distance, the best among the major states with a literacy rate of 96.2%. More impressively, the gap between male and female literacy is the smallest in Kerala at just 2.2 percentage points. To put that in context, the gap at the all-India level is 14.4 percentage points with male literacy at 84.7% and female literacy at 70.3%.

Typically, states with relatively low literacy rates also tend to have the highest gender skews, but that is not always true. Andhra Pradesh, for instance, has a gap between male and female literacy rates of only 13.9 percentage points, while Rajasthan (23.2), Bihar (19.2) and UP (18.4) have pronounced gaps despite having better overall literacy rates.

The gap between urban and rural literacy rates is of the same order of magnitude as that between males and females. Once again, Kerala has the lowest gap of 1.9 percentage points. At the other end of the spectrum on this count are Telangana, where urban literacy is 23.4 percentage points higher than rural literacy, and Andhra Pradesh, where the difference is 19.2 percentage points. The combined effect of the gender and urban-rural skews means that the difference between urban male literacy and rural female literacy is an alarming 27.2 percentage points at the national level. In individual states, it can be much worse. In Rajasthan, for example, it is 38.5 percentage points (9.1% versus 52.6%) and in Telangana, 38 percentage points (91.7% versus 53.7%). Male urban literacy is under 90% in only four major states and below 85% in none of them.

In contrast, rural female literacy is above 80% only in Kerala and below 70% in 13 of the 22 major states. In four of these, it is below 60%.

Statistics, year-wise

2005> 16: literacy, gender-wise

2005> 16: literacy in India, gender-wise
From: April 1, 2020: The Times of India

See graphic:

2005> 16: literacy in India, gender-wise

Literacy in 2006

Indian states with the best/ worst literacy dropout rate, 2004-12. Source: The Times of India

India has 37% of world's illiterate adults

IANS| Jan 29, 2014

India has by far the largest population of illiterate adults — 287 million or 37 per cent of the global total, according to the "EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2013-14: Teaching and Learning: Achieving quality for All." Commissioned by Unesco, it said that 10 countries (including India) account for 557 million or 72 per cent of the global population of illiterate adults.

"India's literacy rate rose from 48 per cent in 1991 to 63 per cent in 2006, (the latest year for which data was available), but population growth cancelled the gains. So there was no change in the number of illiterate adults," the report said.

Though India has more than 99 per cent children in schools because of the Right to Education Act, the quality of education being imparted is a big challenge that should be addressed, a top Unesco officer said.

The report also said that a global learning crisis was costing governments $129 billion a year, and that 10 per cent of global spending on primary education was being lost on poor quality education that was failing to ensure that children learn.

"It leaves one in four young people in poor countries unable to read a single sentence, affecting one-third of young women in South and West Asia," it said.

The countries include Bhutan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.

2011: Literacy rate 74.4%

The Times of India, January 28, 2016

2001 and 2011: i) Literacy rate and number of literates in India; ii) enrolment in primary and upper- primary education; Graphic courtesy: The Times of India, January 28, 2016

Chethan Kumar Literacy rate up, but so is illiteracy

Population Rising But Enrolment Not Keeping Pace

The overall literacy rate in the country may have gone up to 74.4%, but the drop in the illiteracy rate has not matched the increase in population. Between 2001 and 2011, the population above the age of 7 grew by 18.65 crore but the decrease in the number of illiterates is just 3.11 crore.

A 2015 Unesco report said that in terms of absolute numbers, India -with 28.7 crore illiterates -was the country with the largest number of adults without basic literacy skills in 2010-11 compared to 2000-01 when it had 30.4 crore illiterates. The fact that illiteracy is not being tackled is evident from the enrolment rates in primary and upper primary schools. Over 12 years (2000-01 to 2013-14), the number of children who enrolled in primary schools increased by just 1.86 crore, and at the upper primary level by just over 2 crore.The population during this period, however, increased by more than 18 crore.

“Over the past few years, there has been a dip in the enrolment rate across the country compared to the growth in population,“ says A S Seetharamu, a former professor of the Institute of Social and Economic Change.

Going by 2011 Census data, most states, barring a few like Nagaland, have recorded an increase in population but the enrolment rate does not mirror that. The country also seems to be having a problem with retaining people in schools and colleges. An average of 326 out of 1,000 students in rural areas are dropping out, while the same is 383 per 1,000 in urban areas, the National Sample Survey Organisation's (NSSO) last survey reveals. This data counts people up to the age of 29.

UNESCO has put the number of out-of-school (OOS) children at 17 lakh in India.A survey commissioned by the Centre put the number for 2014 at 61lakh, with SC and ST children making up 49.03% (29.73 lakh) of these.

2011: the most and least literate states

See graphic. : Literary rate, 2011, Bihar and Kerala and other states having highest and lowest adult literacy, respectively, 2011

Literary rate, 2011, Bihar and Kerala and other states having highest and lowest adult literacy, respectively, 2011; The Times of India, August 2, 2017

2017: Literacy rate, youth

See graphic: Youth Literacy Rate as in August 2017

Youth Literacy Rate as in August 2017; The Times of India, August 14, 2017

Statistics, India and the world

2015: India 2nd most `ignorant' among 33 nations

The Times of India, Dec 07 2015

India 2nd most `ignorant' nation, Mexico 1st: Study

India has the dubious honour of being the second most ignorant nation in the world after Mexico, according to a survey which posed questions on issues like inequality , non-religious population, female employment and internet access. The survey conducted by Ipsos MORI, a London-based market research firm, polled 25,000 people from 33 countries and found that while people “overestimate what we worry about“, a lot of major issues are underestimated.

“Mexico and India receive the dubious honour of being the most inaccurate in their perceptions on these issues, while South Koreans are the most accurate, followed by the Irish,“ the survey said.

The rankings of the nations were based on the “index of ignorance“ which was determined by questions about wealth that the top 1% own, obesity , non-religious population, immigration, living with parents, female employment, rural living and internet access.

Most Indians “underestimate“ how much of the country's wealth is concentrated in the hands of the top 1%, the survey said, adding that the top 1% actually own an “incredible“ 70% of all wealth.

The survey also found that most Indians “hugely overestimate“ the proportions of non-religious people in the country to be 33% when the true figure is under 1%.

While Israel significantly underestimates the proportion of female employment (by 29 percentage points), people in countries like India, Mexico, South Africa and Chile all think of more women in work than really are, it said.India fell in the list of nations which overestimate representation by women in politics.

Countries like Columbia, Russia, India and Brazil all think there is better female representation than there really is, the survey said.

However, the Indian population seriously underestimates the rural population of the country and thinks more people have internet access than in reality .

In India, the average guess among online respondents for internet access is 60% -an overestimation of the true picture of 41 percentage points, the survey added.

Community-wise literacy

2018

Atul Thakur, Muslims fare worst on key literacy rates, August 13, 2020: The Times of India

From: Atul Thakur, Muslims fare worst on key literacy rates, August 13, 2020: The Times of India

Literacy and school-education among the Muslims, SCs and STs, presumably as in 2018.
From: Atul Thakur, Muslims fare worst on key literacy rates, August 13, 2020: The Times of India

A decade and a half after the Sachar Committee highlighted the issue, a report from the National Statistical Office reveals that Muslims are on various yardsticks of academic marginalisation as bad or even worse than SCs and STs.

It shows that among various social groups, the literacy rate for those aged 7 yrs or more was the highest for “others”, which is non-SC/ST/OBC population, at 91% for men and 81% for women. This proportion declines to 84% for OBC men and 69% for OBC women. For SCs, the ratio was 80.3% for men and 64% for women and for STs 78% for men and 61% for women. Among religious groups, 88% of Christian men and 82% of women were literate, highest proportions for both genders.

Literacy rate of Muslim men is 80.6%

This was followed by Sikhs and Hindus. The literacy rate of 80.6% among Muslim men was equivalent to that for Dalits and marginally higher than the rate among tribals. The literacy rate for Muslim women was higher than Dalit or tribal women, but lower than for women of any other religious group.

The gross attendance ratio (people attending a level of education as a proportion of the population of the corresponding age group) was the lowest for Muslims among various social and religious groups at all levels of education except above higher secondary, where it was between the rates for Dalits and tribals.

At the primary level, the GAR of 100 for Muslims was lower than “others”, SCs, STs, OBCs, Sikhs, Christians, and Hindus. At the upper primary level, Muslims were the only community whose GAR was below 90%. At the secondary level, the GAR of 71.9% for Muslims was lower than STs

(79.8%), SCs and OBCs. Similarly at the higher secondary level, the GAR was lowest for Muslims at 48.3%, well below even the 52.8% for Dalits.

Above the higher secondary level, the GAR of 14.5% for Muslims was just above 14.4% for tribals but below 17.8% for Dalits. Unlike the tribal population, of which a significant proportion lives in remote areas, Muslims don’t live very far from higher educational institutes and yet the drop out was nearly equal. Muslims also had the highest proportion of youth (age 3-35 years) who had never enrolled in formal educational programmes. About 17% of Muslim men in this age group had never been enrolled for education.

Literacy-related issues, state-wise

Kerala

The Hindu, November 9, 2016

Move to educate migrant workers in most literate State

Kerala government will teach them to read and write in Hindi and Malayalam, besides creating legal awareness.

The sense of alienation that migrant workers in Kerala feel will come down substantively if the efforts of the Kerala State Literacy Mission Authority (KSLMA) prove a success.

The KSLMA is all set to launch a social literacy drive to integrate migrant labourers into Kerala society, by imparting reading and writing skills to them and to orient them to the culture of the State. A large majority of the 25 lakh migrant labourers in the State, many of whom hail from North India, are illiterate even in their mother tongue, according to KSLMA. As a result, they are ignorant in legal, health and environmental matters, resulting in poor quality of living as well as exploitation by their employers. This leads to gaps in their social relations with the locals.

"Our effort is to give them minimum language skill so that they are able to interact better with their hosts," says KSLMA director P.S. Sreekala. The workers, who contribute heavily to the State's development, were being “ostracised.” The literacy programme aimed at solving this issue by teaching them to read and write in Malayalam as well as Hindi, apart from introducing them to the social and cultural features of the State, and creating legal and health-related awareness, she said.

KSLMA is initiating three other programmes this year, including a continuing education mission for members of the trans-gender community, an environmental literacy mission and a functional literacy drive, aimed at the coastal areas of Kasaragod, Malappuram and Thiruvananthapuram.

Literacy: India

Contents