Valiant attempts have been made to make India more literate, but with the rise in population, the number of uneducated people in the country is still enormous. Officially, only one-third of India is illiterate, well over 300 million people. Recent surveys have shown that the illiteracy rate is probably far higher than this, possibly as high as half of the population.

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 labour to make even the smallest dent. Development Alternatives found a way to slash conventional reading times. The result is a programme called TARA Akshar that teaches adults to read in less than a month and does not need a qualified teacher. All it needs is a computer and a willing instructor, who has had a week’s training.

TARA Akshar: The First Step
Tara Akshar is an innovative literacy programme, which teaches illiterate people of all ages to read and write. An instructor, with the help of computer software, some special playing cards, reading and writing books and charts, teaches people to read and write in Hindi.

During the experimentation phase, it was found that with the judicious use of memory techniques, a person could remember up to 50 new words. The same concept was incorporated in the reading part of TARA Akshar. These techniques were converted into a 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.

Initial Stages of TARA Akshar

After initial trials, a pilot study was carried out on a community outside Delhi. Instructors and master trainers are identified from within the SHGs and the NGO staff members within the PACS programme network. These instructors are then trained and certified to deliver the TARA Akshar course. Initially, they were provided online and on-site handholding and guidance by master trainers. A MIS-based monitoring and feedback system was used to track the quality of product delivery and learner success rate. Three local volunteers, 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 then joined a Reading Club, where they regularly came to practice reading out aloud together in order to improve their reading speeds. Another batch of 24 students was tested in the second phase.

The results were extremely encouraging, with almost 75% of the students managing to read and write. The dropout rate was only 20%, an astonishingly low figure, as anyone who has tried running similar schemes in Indian rural areas will tell you. TARA Akshar programme has been designed to fit into the specific needs and requirements of the people, especially women. It takes less than 2 hours each day for 30 days for an individual to become literate.

Progress of TARA Akshar

TARA Akshar has come a long way from its inception. Till date, over 50,000 women, including 100 physically challenged women, have attained literacy. In the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana, 62 centres are still operational, where NGOs have continued this program using their own resources. Initially, TARA Akshar was rolled out under the PACS programme, where 280 centres were made operational from April 2007 to February 2008 (Closure of PACS programme). The overall results were 98% and dropout rate a mere 1%.

Status of the Programme

From August 1, 2008, 41 centres became operational in Madhya Pradesh, covering the districts of Ratlam, Barwani, Dewas and Shajapur. The programme is fully sponsored by the SUZLON Foundation where TARA Akshar plans to literate over 5000 women in the period August 2008 to April 2009. The OXFAM Trust has also shown great interest in this programme, where some 100 women were made literate in Tikamgarh district in March - April 2008 and another 100 women in August - September 2008 in Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh.

The TARA Akshar Flip Chart Version

The TARA Akshar Flip chart version was run on a trial basis in remote areas where there was no electricity. After the success of its computer-based literacy programme, a trial run of FLIP chart-based version is in progress in Nalanda and west Champaran district of Bihar and Chhatarpur district of Madhya Pradesh. This flip chart version is an effort to take the literacy programme to the remote areas with either erratic or no electricity. The course content of the literacy programme will remain essentially the same. It will simply use flip charts and flash cards to read and write basic Hindi (Devanagri script) instead of with the help of a computer software. The only difference between the computer-based programme and the FLIP chart version that the course will now take 50 days to complete instead of the earlier period of 30 days. q

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