National Literacy Mission

The Census 2001 provisional reports indicate that India has made significant progress in the field of literacy during the decade since the previous census in 1991.The literacy rate in 2001 has been recorded at 64.84% as against 52.21% in 1991.The 12.63 percentage points increase in the literacy rate during the period is the highest increase in any decade.Also for the first time there is a decline in the absolute number of non-literates during the past 10 years.The total number of non literates has come down from 328 million in 1991 to 304 million in 2001.During 1991-2000, the population in 7+ age group increased by 176 millions while 201 million additional persons became literate during that period.Out of 864 million people above the age of 7 years, 560 million are now literates.Three-fourths of our male population and more than half of the female population are literate.This indeed is an encouraging indicator for us to speed up our march towards the goal of achieving a sustainable threshold literacy rate of 75% by 2007

Source :http://www.nlm.nic.in/