Exploring Literacy Practices and Challenges in India

India is home to one of the world’s most complex literacy landscapes. With over 1.4 billion people, more than 462 languages spoken across its territories, deep-rooted social hierarchies, and vast rural-urban divides, literacy in India is never just about the ability to read and write. It is deeply embedded in questions of identity, power, culture, and access. Understanding how literacy practices work – and why they often fall short – requires looking well beyond classrooms and textbooks.

Where India stands today 🔗

Progress in literacy over the past few decades has been real and measurable. The National Sample Survey Office’s PLFS 2023-24 report placed India’s overall literacy rate at 80.9%, a significant jump from 64.83% recorded in 2001. The World Bank’s 2023 data puts the adult literacy rate (ages 15 and above) at 81.7%. Youth literacy, at 91.7%, signals that younger generations are far better educated than their predecessors.

But these aggregate numbers hide far more than they reveal. Urban literacy sits at 88.9%, while rural literacy lags at 77.5% – an 11.4 percentage point gap that reflects stark differences in infrastructure, teacher availability, and economic opportunity. State-level disparities are equally dramatic: Mizoram leads at 98.2% literacy, while states like Andhra Pradesh continue to struggle well below the national average.

Formal versus informal learning: a critical distinction 🔗

Literacy in India does not happen in schools alone. A large proportion of adults who become literate do so through informal channels – community learning centres, self-help groups, NGO-run programmes, and peer teaching. Understanding this distinction between formal and informal learning is essential to appreciating how literacy actually works on the ground.

The formal education system and its limits 🔗

Formal schooling – government-run primary and secondary schools – remains the backbone of India’s literacy infrastructure. Yet systemic weaknesses undermine its reach and quality. A study of 188 government-run primary schools in central and northern India found that 59% had no drinking water facilities and 89% had no toilets. With an average pupil-to-teacher ratio of 42:1 nationally, teacher shortages are chronic. Caste-based discrimination further compounds matters: in states like Bihar, children from marginalised communities frequently face exclusion and harassment in schools, contributing to high dropout rates even when enrolment improves.

These structural gaps mean that formal schooling, while indispensable, cannot be the only channel for achieving meaningful literacy – particularly for adults who missed their window for formal education.

Informal and community-based learning 🔗

India has a long tradition of community-based learning. The historical gurukula system, supported by public donations and centred on personalised instruction, is one of the earliest examples. In the modern era, NGOs and civil society organisations have stepped in where the state has not. Organisations like Pratham, Rotary clubs, and ITC have run programmes aimed at improving literacy rates across underserved communities. Kerala’s experience in the late 1980s is perhaps the most celebrated: the state mobilised cultural troupes, literacy marches, and a door-to-door survey network to drive a mass literacy campaign that transformed outcomes across the state.

Research on informal adult learning confirms one important finding: when literacy programmes are linked with practical skills such as vocational training, health awareness, or income-generating activities, they attract much wider participation from adults – particularly older women – who otherwise see little direct utility in literacy classes.

Social and caste-based barriers to literacy 🔗

India’s caste system continues to shape who gets literate and who does not. A peer-reviewed study published in the Economics of Education Review (2024) found that social identity significantly affects adult learning outcomes in India. Using data from a randomised experiment with adult female learners, researchers found a positive and measurable impact on literacy scores when lower-caste students were matched with upper-caste teachers – pointing to how deeply ingrained social hierarchies shape confidence and learning in adult education settings.

The implications go beyond individual classrooms. Entire communities – particularly Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and Other Backward Classes (OBC) – have historically been excluded from formal education, creating multi-generational literacy deficits. Studies consistently find that illiteracy rates remain significantly higher among SC/ST populations, leading to unequal access to employment, lower wages, and persistent poverty. Effective literacy programmes must, therefore, reckon directly with caste as a structural barrier – not treat it as incidental.

The role of language in literacy 🔗

India is one of the most linguistically diverse nations on earth. Constitutional provisions recognise 22 scheduled languages, but the census records over 121 languages and 270 distinct mother tongues with more than 10,000 speakers each. For learners – especially children and adults in tribal or rural areas – being taught in a language different from the one spoken at home is a significant barrier to literacy development.

Research published in TESOL Quarterly (2024) studied over 1,272 primary school children from low-income households and found that minority language speakers who do not receive mother tongue-based instruction consistently underperform in regional language literacy compared to their peers. Put simply, learning to read in an unfamiliar language slows down the acquisition of literacy fundamentals.

India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 acknowledges this directly, recommending mother tongue or home language as the primary medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, and preferably until Grade 8. A recent UNESCO report titled Bhasha Matters: State of the Education Report for India 2025 reinforces this position, citing classroom evidence that when schools use learners’ home languages, measurable improvements follow in reading comprehension, classroom participation, and conceptual understanding.

The challenge, however, is that implementation remains uneven. Despite the NEP’s ambitions, the rollout of mother tongue-based multilingual education has been slow and patchy due to logistical hurdles, resource limitations, and widespread societal preference for English as the medium for upward economic mobility. For adult literacy programmes, this tension becomes acute: learners often want instruction in languages that open economic doors, even when their foundational literacy would develop faster in their mother tongue.

Gender and literacy: a persistent gap 🔗

Of all the fault lines in India’s literacy landscape, gender remains among the most entrenched. The national male-female literacy gap stands at 12.6 percentage points – male literacy is at 87.2% while female literacy sits at 74.6%. In states like Rajasthan, the gap has historically exceeded 29 percentage points, meaning roughly one in every two women remains illiterate.

The causes are structural and cultural. Deep gender stereotyping leads families to prioritise sons’ education, while daughters are expected to contribute to agricultural work and household duties. Early marriage, lack of safe transportation, absence of female teachers in rural schools, and inadequate sanitation facilities in schools all act as compounding barriers. This creates an intergenerational cycle: uneducated mothers are less able to support their children’s education, and the literacy deficit reproduces itself across generations.

There is, however, some positive momentum. The National Literacy Mission, launched in 1988, built in a 60:40 female-to-male ratio in its programmes, and since then, female literacy growth (11.8% over 2001-2011) outpaced male literacy growth (6.9%) for the first time in a decadal period. Government schemes like Beti Bachao Beti Padhao and the targeted provisions of India’s current flagship adult education scheme, ULLAS (Nav Bharat Saaksharta Karyakram), explicitly prioritise girls, women, and marginalised communities.

Government initiatives and the ULLAS programme 🔗

India’s current response to adult illiteracy is centred on the ULLAS – Nav Bharat Saaksharta Karyakram (New India Literacy Programme), a centrally sponsored scheme running from 2022 to 2027. The programme targets non-literate adults aged 15 and above across all states and union territories. It goes beyond basic reading and writing, integrating digital literacy, financial literacy, legal awareness, healthcare knowledge, and vocational skills into its curriculum.

The scale of the challenge ULLAS addresses is significant. Census 2011 data identified 25.76 crore non-literate individuals aged 15 and above, of whom 16.68 crore were women. Despite progress under the earlier Saakshar Bharat programme, an estimated 18 crore adults remained non-literate when ULLAS was launched. The new scheme targets 5 crore learners over five years – one crore per year – using a technology-driven platform called OTLAS and volunteer networks that include school and university students earning academic credit for their participation.

As of September 2025, ULLAS has enrolled over 3 crore learners, mobilised 42 lakh volunteers, and achieved a 90% pass rate in its assessments, with materials available in 26 languages. Five states and union territories – Ladakh, Mizoram, Goa, Tripura, and Himachal Pradesh – have been declared fully literate (over 95% functional literacy) under the programme.

Toward inclusive, culturally sensitive literacy programmes 🔗

The evidence from decades of literacy work in India points to one consistent conclusion: no single model works everywhere. India’s social, linguistic, and cultural diversity demands literacy programmes that are locally grounded, context-sensitive, and built around the real lives of learners.

Effective literacy initiatives in India share several common features. They are delivered in languages that learners understand and use. They link literacy to practical, life-relevant skills – whether health, livelihoods, legal rights, or digital access. They involve communities as active participants, not passive recipients. And they treat gender not as an afterthought, but as a central design principle – with targeted outreach, female facilitators, flexible timings, and incentives that acknowledge the domestic constraints women face.

The 2025 UNESCO report on multilingual education in India recommends that states institutionalise community participation in school practice and develop gender-responsive, mother tongue-based frameworks across all educational stages – advice equally applicable to adult literacy contexts. The lesson from Kerala, Mizoram, and other high-performing states is that literacy gains are most durable when communities own the process.

India’s literacy story is ultimately not just a story about reading and writing. It is a story about who gets to participate in public life, access economic opportunity, navigate healthcare systems, and exercise their rights as citizens. Closing the literacy gap – especially for older women and marginalised communities – requires programmes that connect literacy to tangible benefits, build trust within communities, and are designed with those communities rather than for them.

What do you think? Given India’s vast linguistic and social diversity, how should literacy programmes balance the use of regional mother tongues with the practical demand for Hindi or English instruction? And do you think current government programmes like ULLAS are doing enough to address the social and cultural barriers – particularly gender and caste – that continue to hold millions of adults back from literacy?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_India
2. https://rtegujarat.org/literacy-rate-in-india-2026-state-wise/
3. https://borgenproject.org/indias-literacy-rate/
4. https://www.orfonline.org/research/literacy-in-india-the-gender-and-age-dimension
5. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775724000013
6. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-023-02457-5
7. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12584054/
8. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/tesq.3326
9. https://www.understandupsc.com/mother-tongue-based-multilingual-education-in-india-nep-2020-and-policy-focus/
10. https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/unesco-launch-bhasha-matters-state-education-report-india-2025-mother-tongue-and-multilingual
11. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14782103251320532
12. https://ballardbrief.byu.edu/issue-briefs/educational-disparities-among-girls-in-india
13. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressNoteDetails.aspx?NoteId=151922&ModuleId=3