Education is the basis demand of a man. Without education one cannot develop one’s mind and therefore a free and actual utilization of one’s capacity and skills cannot be made.
An educated person can lead a better life than an illiterate person. An illiterate person does not know even his rights. He cannot look after himself properly and cannot run his own affairs efficiently. He can be easily exploited.
In nut shell, education is necessary for all round development of the country. But whatever efforts are made by the government to educate people shall prove short if people do not help in checking the population growth.
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We have made a large network for imparting education to all. We plan to provide free and compulsory education of satisfactory quality to all children upto the age of 14 years before the commencement of the 21st century.
We are committed to earmark about six per cent of the GDP for education by the year 2000 A.D. and fifty per cent of this outlay shall be spent on Primary Education.
Plan outlay on education is also increased form Rs. 153 crore in the First Five Year Plan to Rs. 19,600 crore in the eight plan. Out of this a sum of Rs. 9201 (47%) was earmarked for elementary education.
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In the light of the above facts, it is exasperating to note that as per 1991 census, the literacy percentage of our population was only 52.21 percent.
Literacy implies a person capable enough to read and write and understand a certain language. Thus we have a population of 47.79% to make them literate.
It is estimated that about 2 crore children are added each year to our population.
Thus educating such a vast population with quality education is certainly a very big task.
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Then we have also to see that mere literacy cannot suffice for the overall development. Therefore there is a great need of higher, technical and skilful education.
Thus considering the vastness of the task vis-a-vis the on-going pace of population growth one can imagine how alarming it would be in near future.
Unless vigorous efforts are made by the government as well as the people to check the ever-growing population, the educational standards in the country will fall further and more people will remain illiterate.