Telangana: Women more illiterate than men in State: Palle Pragathi survey

Hyderabad: Illiteracy is high among the women in rural areas of the State, according to the survey conducted during the Palle Pragathi programme being held in the first two weeks of this month.

The report of the survey has been submitted to the government recently and the findings of it say that about 20 lakh women are illiterates out of the total of 31 lakh in the villages. The survey found that there are about 31.46 lakh illiterates in the rural areas in the State.

According to survey, about 20.39 lakh women and 11.06 lakh men are illiterates in all the 12,751 villages. Women illiterates form 65 per cent of the total illiterates as per the survey.

The survey revealed that erstwhile Medak and Nizamabad districts have good literacy rate whereas Suryapet, Vikarabad and Yadadri Bhuvanagiri districts have more illiterates.

As Telangana ranks low all over the country in the literacy rate, the State government has decided to address the issue. It has instructed the Panchayat Raj staff to count the number of illiterates in each village in the second phase of the Palle Pragathi programme being held from January 2 to 11.

The staff of the PR department visited each house and recorded the details of the illiterates. They found that most of the women did not know how to read and write any language.

The officials said that lack of encouragement to make women literates was the reason for the high illiteracy rate among the women.

The parents where schools are not available have not shown interest to send their girl children to other areas where schools are available. Even though, hostels are available, the parents did not show interest to send girls to the schools in other areas.

Most of the parents from the poor families preferred to get their girl children are married at a younger age. Once girl gets married, opportunity to become literate is closed to her.

Officials said that the government may take up action plan with the involvement of various departments which have staff in the villages like Panchayat Raj, Education, Police and others to address the illiteracy issue. The women self help groups may also be involved in the programme.