Mizoram, Tripura beat terror past to become literacy front-runners

Agartala/Aizawl: Tripura and Mizoram - the two northeastern states
once ravaged by terrorism -- have successfully become front-runners in
India's literacy movement.

According to provisional data for the 2011 census, literacy level is
91.58 percent in Mizoram and 87.75 percent in Tripura. They are only
behind Kerala (93.91 percent), which continues to occupy the top
position in the literacy chart. The national literacy rate is 74.04
percent.

In Mizoram, the second most literate state in the country, literacy
rate has gone up from 88.49 percent to 91.58 percent.

Female literacy stands at 89.40 percent of the 538,675 women and male
literacy at 93.72 percent of 552,339 men.

In the 2001 Census, Mizoram's literacy rate was 88.49 percent.

"Serchhip district (98.76 percent) in northern Mizoram and Aizawl
district (98.50 percent) have recorded highest literacy rates among
all districts in India," a census official in Aizawl said.

The Christian missionaries and the influential NGO - Young Mizo
Association (YMA) - are the main promoters of education in the
mountainous Mizoram, which witnessed over a decade of terrorism till
1986.

"The Mizos came under the influence of the British missionaries in the
19th century, and now most of the Mizos are Christians. One of the
beneficial results of missionary activities was the spread of
education," renowned Mizo academician K. Liantlinga said.

"The missionaries introduced the Roman script for the Mizo language
and formal education. The cumulative result is the present high
percentage of literacy in the state, bordering Myanmar and
Bangladesh," he added.

The Tripura success story is attributed to the involvement of local
government bodies, including gram panchayats, NGOs and clubs.

"Our efforts are on to achieve 100 percent literacy in Tripura,"
Education Minister Tapan Chakraborty told the sources. Had there been
no militancy, he added, Tripura would have attained 100 percent
literacy long back.

"Education and development have been affected due to terrorism in the
state until 2009," he stated.

Senior census official Dilip Acherjee said in Agartala, "In Tripura,
increase of female literacy is better than their male counterparts."

"The literacy rate of Tripura has gone up from 73.19 percent (of the
total 3.1 million population) in 2001 Census to 87.75 percent (of the
total of 3.6 million population) in the 2011 Census, showing an
increase of 14.56 percent," he said.

"Interestingly, literacy rate of females during the same period rose
from 64.91 to 83.15 percent with an increase of 18.24 percent while in
case of male the increase was just 11.18 percent -- from 81 to 92.18
percent," Acharjee said.

While Mizoram and Tripura are among the toppers in literacy in India,
another northeastern state Arunachal Pradesh (66.95 percent) placed
the second lowest position in literacy in the country after Bihar
(63.82 percent). IANS