| Making India Literate Over one third of Indians above the age of 7 are illiterate. (World Bank Development Policy Review 2003) Tara Akshar is an innovative literacy program, which teaches illiterate people to read and write hindi in just four weeks. The Background And a population that is illiterate will not be able to move out of the borderline agricultural existence in which it currently strives to survive. A population that can at least read and write can train on vocational skills and has a chance to create a viable economic system, where hunger, malnutrition, outrageous child mortality rates and dismal absence of primary health care and education can be addressed. Behind the statistics are two realities – the adults (mostly rural, mostly female) who never learnt to read and never will, and the kids who drop out of school. Half of all Indian school kids right now drop out of Primary School. And of course, most of them have not learnt to read. If they had, there’s a much better chance they would have stayed on at school! So we have to teach millions of adults, and we have to teach millions of kids who are dropping out, and we have to ensure that the kids at school right now are taught better so that they don’t drop out. Currently in India it takes between 6 months to 2 years to teach people to read. Multiply that by hundreds of millions. It represents a staggering amount of effort, persistence, patience and manpower to make even the smallest dent. The Solution We found a way to slash conventional reading times. We went back to first principles, and constructed a hypothesis, like any good scientist, and tested the hypothesis and it worked! The result is a programme called TARA Akshar. Preliminary results indicate that it teaches adults to read in less than a month and doesn’t need a qualified teacher. All it needs is a computer and a willing instructor, who has had a week’s training. How TARA Akshar was developed Tara Akshar is an innovative literacy program, which teaches illiterate people to read and write. It works on adults as well as on kids. An instructor with the help of computer software, some special playing cards, reading and writing books and charts teaches people to read and write. TARA Akshar works on the concept of memory techniques which was used in ancient memory systems by the Greeks and Romans. During the experimentation phase it was found that by the judicious use of memory techniques up to 50 new words a day can be remembered. The same concept wa The progress of TARA Akshar Then a pilot study on a community outside Delhi with a large illiterate population was done. Three local volunteers were trained as instructors, enrolled 48 completely illiterate adult female students in the first batch. The batch of 24 was tested after 18 days and it was found that 75% of them could manage simple reading without any assistance. The students were then put onto a Reading Club, which runs in the Community Hall every day, where they came to practice reading out aloud together to improve their reading speeds. Another batch of 24 was tested in the second phase. The results were very encouraging with almost 75% managing to read and write. The drop-out rate was only 20%, an astonishingly low figure as anyone who has tried running similar schemes in Indian rural areas will tell you. Till date, over 1000 people have already benefited with the success rate going higher and higher. Effectiveness of the programme TARA Akshar programme has been designed in such a way that it fits into the specific needs and requirements of the people, especially females. It takes only less than 2 hours each day for 30 days for an individual to learn how to read and write. Empowering women SHG members in Poorest Areas Civil Society Programme In the last six years, women in the PACS states have been empowered through creation of self-help groups, increased participation in Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) and livelihood generation activities. More than 20,000 women SHGs / CBOs have been formed. These groups represent more than 200,000 women who actively participate in their day-to-day functioning. However, a sizeable number of these women are still functionally illiterate. This could prove to be a big obstacle for them to continue their participation in local governance. Making them functionally literate can ensure their participation in CBO and PRI activities in a much more effective and sustainable manner, even after the expiry of the PACS Programme. Last, but not the least, a functionally literate woman is much better equipped to take charge of herself and her family members’ life. The need for a literacy program, especially aimed at women SHG members, has also been felt by many PACS partners. Over the last one year, this need has been articulated repeatedly by many PACS partners during the State PLWs as well. The New Destinations To address the issue of illiteracy in a meaningful manner and in a relatively shorter time frame, PACS programme is adopting this unique computer-based functional literacy programme. TARA Akshar aims to make literate at least 50,000 women SHG members in the PACS states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Chattishgarh and Jharkhand over the next 10 months. Status of TARA Akshar programme Master Trainer training of 27 trainers representing Bihar, Jharkhand, UP and MP was conducted from Dec 18-27, ‘06 at WALMI Bhopal. The state-wise break- up of the candidates is as follows: MP (07); Bihar (08); UP (07); Jharkhand (05) Of these 27, 25 candidates have finally been shorlisted to become Master Trainers for the TARA Akshar Training Programme. In addition to TARA Akshar programme, these participants were also groomed in personality development and confidence building. The TARA Akshar training team was extremely happy and satisfied with the performance and participation level of the Master Trainers. The preparations for the next phase of Trainings — training of Instructors by the Master Trainers — is going on in full swing. Special workshops have been organised to screen and shortlist instructors and quality controllers for the programme. At the time of writing this the process has been completed in the states of Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. The procurement process for purchase of laptops for the TARA Akshar programme has also been completed and the vendor has been finalised. The order is expected to be placed by Feb 21, ’07. The eagerly awaited first phase of instructor trainings is expected to begin from the second week of March, 2007. The Implementation structure of TARA Akshar As TARA Akshar is committed to reach more people in the year 2007 a new implementation structure has been designed. This new structure ensures maximum results. A chain has been created which helps inflow of information both ways. TARA Akshar Team: This team is based at head office. The main responsibility of the team is to plan, monitor, and evaluate the programme. As well as building capacity of the rest with regards to knowledge, information, skills etc. Quality Controller: The position itself describes the roles. (S)he will be responsible for supervising the quality of teaching being imparted by the Instructors. There will be one QC per 5 centers. Master Trainer: MTs are mainly for imparting training to QCs and Instructors, as well as monitoring the entire programme in their respective areas; 25 MTs have been trained at Bhopal. Instructors: The success of the entire programme lies in the hands of Instructors. They are the people who will actually be delivering the programme in the field. There will be around 270 instructors for the said purpose. Delivery Model The delivery model of computer literacy software involves local instructors /trainers delivering the course to groups of six students over a period of 30 course days. The instructors are in turn trained by master trainers during a one week programme. They are overseen by Supervisors for quality assurance, testing and certification. The programme is backed by other management and support mechanisms During delivery, major emphasis is to ensure maximum participation of women from the disadvantaged sections of the community. Fortunately, preliminary field tests have already indicated that this can be ensured by identifying locations where women SHG/CIG members themselves have a predominant need to become functionally literate. Instructors and master trainers will be identified from within the SHGs and the NGO staff members within the PACS network. These Instructors will be trained and certified to deliver the TARA Akshar course. Initially, they will be provided online and on-site handholding and guidance by master trainers. An MIS based monitoring and feedback system will be used to track the quality of product delivery and learner success rate. Success Stories Seetho: Seetho is a single woman in her late twenties. She was completely illiterate and is also polio afflicted. She cannot use her legs. She cannot stand. She can move about slowly using her hands. She had a wheelchair but it broke a few years ago. That, plus her lack of self-confidence, made her shut herself away in her house for years. Then, she heard about the TARA Akshar course in her village in Bhatti Mines. She requested her sister-in-law to take her, “piggy-back” to the community hall where she enrolled for the course. She became our best student. She always arrived on time always on her sister-in-law’s back. She always smiled. She learned quicker than everyone else and was an inspiration to the instructors and the students.Now she can read. She comes regularly to our Reading Club for TARA Akshar graduates. But now she arrives unaided in her new wheelchair! Asha : Asha is married and in her twenties. Until a few months ago, she was completely illiterate. She enrolled for the TARA Akshar course and always brought her son along. At the end of her three week course, she told us: “My husband used to consider me good for nothing because I was illiterate. He would never include me in taking decisions. But now that I can read, our whole relationship has changed. My husband treats me with respect. I am now for the first time a part of the decision-making in our house. She then said to us: “I bless you. Let every good thing happen to you for giving me literacy.” We hope that every single women SHG member in the PACS network will be literate by the end of PACS programme and will have a story similar to that of Seetho and Asha. q
Col. M.S.Ahluwalia & S.Rana msahluwalia@tarahaat.com srana@tarahaat.com
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Valiant attempts have been made to make India more literate, but with the rise in population, the number of illiterate people in the country is still enormous. Officially, only one third of India is illiterate. Only one third! That’s well over 300 million people. Surveys recently have shown that the illiteracy rate is probably far higher than this, possibly as high as half of the population. 
If we could cut the time and effort it takes to teach reading to adult illiterates (and kids) to a fraction of the current time, we could then begin to anticipate the sort of literacy levels that most other countries have. Conventional wisdom is that it takes a long time and the drop-out rates will always be high.
s incorporated in the TARA Akshar reading part. These techniques were converted into multi-media computer software program. This was first tested on a batch of adult illiterates in and around Delhi. The early results were very encouraging. After a lot of experimenting and re-versioning and consultations with expert educators and psychologists round the world, TARA Akshar, its product manual and a protocol, and a training course were finally developed.