Tribal literacy gets a boost in Kerala as 9975 Adivasis benefit from schemes in two years

Kerala Literacy Mission's three different programmes to make adivasis literate has benefitted a total of 9975 people in the past two years. When compared to 2015-2017, the numbers show a nine-fold increase as there were only 1117 beneficiaries in the period. 4309 people from the Wayanad Literacy equivalency programme, 3670 people from the Attappadi Literacy Equivalency programme and 1996 people from the Samagra project aimed at educating people from 100 different adivasi colonies in the state who are behind in the education front together makes the grand 9975. Among this 7565 are women.

The third phase of Attappadi literacy equivalency programme had 1763 students. The second phase of Wayanad literacy equivalency programme is also now underway with 5342 students and Samagra has 2720 students enrolled at present making the number of current students 9825.

The programmes owe their success mostly to recruiting adivasi instructors itself. The 620 instructors were found from adivasi's who speak the Gothra language. 400 of them were from Wayanad, 220 from Attapadi and 100 from Samagra.

In Attappadi, the survey revealed 5031 illiterate people in the survey done in 192 hamlets by the literacy mission. The first phase saw 1117 beneficiaries, the second phase had 2553 beneficiaries, making 3670 among them literate. The third phase is now in full swing with the 1361 remaining people.

According to Dr PS Sreekala, Director, Literacy Mission, Attappadi can be declared as a completely literate block. At present, the literacy programme is active in Agali, Sholayoor and Puthur panchayats. To ensure the smooth functioning of the project, organising committees function in the 200 hamlets with the representative of the respective local self-government body as the head.