Indian HRD Minister Sibal gets top grades from Prime Minister

Ahead of the 100 days report card, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave high marks to his minister for human resource development Kapil Sibal and minister of state D Purandeswari.

Inaugurating Saakshar Bharat Mission, the government’s new effort to reduce illiteracy, the prime minister described Mr. Sibal and Ms. Purandeshwari as the “finest minds” in government.

The prime minister said that his government attached great importance to human resource development which is why the “finest minds in our government have been chosen as ministers for this very important and prestigious ministry.” Mr. Singh described the Sibal-Purandeswari team as one” which any country can be legitimately proud of as nation builders.”

Praise was not the only thing Mr. Singh had for his HRD minister. The prime minister reiterated his government’s commitment to providing good quality education to each and every child, and assured that “resources will not be a constraint in the quest of achieving this goal.”

Mr. Singh’s assurance would make Mr Sibal very happy indeed. The government needs to raise an additional Rs. 60,000 crore to be able to finance the Right to Education over the next five years. The cost of implementing the right is Rs. 1,50,000 crore over the next five years, of this Rs. 90,000 crore is provisioned under the plan expenditure.

The Rs. 65 billion literacy mission aims at imparting functional literacy to illiterate adults above the age of 15. It will enable neo-literates to continue their learning beyond basic literacy and acquire equivalency to formal education system as well as enable them to improve their living and earning conditions.

The goal of this mission is to achieve 80% literacy, reduce gender gap in literacy to 10%, reduce regional social and gender disparities.

Reminding that literacy is the first step in imparting education, the prime minister said the new mission with a five-year mandate will “significantly reduce illiteracy” in India, particularly among women.

“One-third of India’s population still continues to be illiterate. About half of our women cannot still read or write. The number of illiterate in India is probably the highest among all nations of the world. We cannot therefore be satisfied with the status quo. Persistent illiteracy, particularly among women, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, minorities and other disadvantaged groups, is a challenge that we must face and meet head on.

We must make our nation fully literate, if we want to empower the average citizen and make rapid progress”, Mr. Singh said.

The PM said that it had been observed that infrastructure development in economic sector and female literacy in social sector were “the two critical factors that impede India’s steady climb to higher level of growth.

Source: The Economic Times