The persistent social inequalities in India stand out starkly when we look at basic indicators like literacy rates. Census data collated over the years clearly reveals that literacy rates of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe population continue to lag, especially in comparison with the national average. Literacy among the Scheduled Castes increased from 10.3 per cent in 1961 to 54.7 per cent in 2001 and the overall literacy rate of the Scheduled Tribes increased from 8.5 per cent to 47.1 per cent over the same period.
The gap between these groups and the national average rose from the sixties to peak in the 1981 Census data, and has been reducing since then — the highest rise in literacy rates was seen in the nineties. Though the government has recognises Scheduled Tribes as the most deprived and marginalised sections of the society, the specific disadvantages that characterise the tribal population have clearly not been addressed effectively.
The level of development has been quite uneven among different states and among various segments of the population within the states. Data from Census 2001 show that some of the states with higher tribal concentrations have done well with higher literacy rates among the Scheduled Tribes. States like Mizoram, Nagaland and Meghalaya fall in this category; 95 per cent of Mizoram’s population falls in the Scheduled Tribe category and the state has the second-highest overall literacy level, while Nagaland and Meghalaya with a more than 80 per cent Scheduled Tribe population have relatively low literacy rates of 65.95 per cent and 61.34 per cent respectively. (Click here for chart)
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However, Orissa and Jharkhand stand out as states with high shares of Scheduled Tribe populations but low literacy levels. On the whole, disparity among states in terms of tribal literacy is high ranging — from 89.3 per cent in Mizoram to 28.17 per cent in Bihar, pointing to the basic differences in the social structure of these states. The Scheduled Castes, on an average, have fared better than the Scheduled Tribes; there are six states with literacy rates lower than the national average in this group — Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar. Except for Karnataka, the remaining five states are way behind the national average in general literacy as well, indicating an endemic problem in these states. Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Goa, Orissa and West Bengal have differences of more than 25 percentage points in overall literacy and literacy in the Scheduled Tribe population, while Bihar and Jharkhand have the highest differences when it comes to overall literacy and Scheduled Caste literacy rates of more than 15 percentage points.
Slow progress of the marginalised sections in the most basic indicators has become one of the major constraints of the current development paradigm meant to ensure sustained growth with equity and social justice. It is true that there has been a much higher increase in the spread of literacy within these two groups since the eighties and while group-wise data, yet to be released for Census 2011, will reaffirm the rising trend, one can only rue the decades of lost opportunity in bringing these groups on a par with the average Indian.
Indian States Development Scorecard, a weekly feature by Indicus Analytics, focuses on the progress in India and across the states across various socio-economic parameters.
