Preamble

Literacy Programme in India, cannot succeed as a selective, bureaucratic and elite governed programme. It has to be a people's movement. But if illiteracy has to be removed from India, the literacy movement has to be scientifically carried out through various languages of the people - including hitherto unwritten languages. As it is absurd to argue that democracy is more expensive in economic terms than totalitarianism, it is equally absurd to argue that using the many languages for spreading literacy is more expensive than using one superposed script by the bureaucracy. An understanding of the ethos of multilinguism on the part of the elite managers of the movement is a precondition of the success of the programme.

The problem and the planning of scripts to so far unwritten languages have to be tackled on principles of linguistics.

The paper favours the use of practical alphabet devised by K.L.Pike and others for unwritten languages. The paper prefers the state language script for the local minority languages.

The Present Central Govt. has taken up the task of organising an Adult Education Programme for approximately 100 million illiterate persons in the age-group 15-35 with a view to providing them skills for self-directed learning leading to self reliant and active role in their own development and in the development of their environment.

It is not just teaching a person of 3 R's that is involved in a literacy programme. It means a great deal more than just enabling a person to read a few words from the printed page or be able to sign his name,. It may mean the writing and reading skills and handling of figures with such an ease that the person may be able to write a letter, read a newspaper or a government pamphlet containing information of his profession or be able to deal with banks, post-offices and other government agencies. The specialists call it 'functional literacy' i.e., literacy that work s. Such a literate person will be able to play his role more effectively in the national life by improving his own occupational status. such literate parents realise the importance of children's education and are not a hindrance to Universal Primary Education.

'Illiteracy' may mean differently in different nations. The U.K. Ministry of Education has defined 'illiterate' as those with reading ages below seven years and 'Semiliterate' as those with reading ages between seven and nine years. The U.S. census defines literate as one who is equivalent to a six grade student. The Indian census defines a 'literate' as one who can both read and write. The test for reading is ability to read any simple letter either in print or in manuscript. The test f or writing is the ability to write a simple letter. out of the four language skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing a person internalises the listening and speaking abilities by being a member of that particular speech-community. one need not go to a school or undertake a formal training to achieve these two language skills. But the other t two skills reading and writing can be acquired either by self learning or through coaching. These are the two skills of a language involved in making a person 'literate'. It would necessarily mean that such a programme be in a language which is the person's first language. If a literacy programme is administered in a second-language, he has also to learn the speaking and listening skills of the language of the operation, thus involving a new burden. In India, where there are countless variations of languages the real problem is to decide in which language these 'illiterates' be taught to read and write. The answer can not be two. 1 It should be the learner's first language. However, 'primitive' a language may be, it is capable of expressing the cultural and social needs of that particular speech-community. It is a system that works in that particular social setting. In the Soviet Union in 1920 when their national programme for eradication o f illiteracy started. it was found that Russian was not spoken by half the population who spoke some sixty and odd languages. May of those languages at that time had no written forms. others have such complicated scripts that illiterate adults could not possibly acquire them within the specified time. The Cyrillic was accepted as the common transcription system and the task was taken with such a zeal that their 1959 census showed a literacy rate of 98.5 percent.

The problem in India is in a way, different. May languages have not even been reduced to writing. Providing a script to an unwritten language is not as simple as adopting any script. Any transcription should presuppose, the phonemic analysis of the language. This requires a great deal of effort on the part of Linguists. Any good graphemic system of a language be matched one to one to its phonemic system. it is worth while to have a practical orthography for hitherto unwritten language based on the phonemic analysis. But it should also be socially acceptable. R.L. Pike has mentioned the following characteristics of practical alphabets.

(i) a phonemic alphabet should have a separate symbol for each distinctive sound.

(ii) there should be no more symbols than there are phonemes.

(iii) allophones of phonemes should rarely receive distinct symbolization when there is a great social pressure due to the fact that such allophones are separate phonemes

in the prestige language.

(iv) freely fluctuating varieties of a phoneme should not receive separate symbolization.

(v) abbreviated forms should be written as they are articulated and not according to

the constituent parts recognised as per morphological analysis.

(vi) extremely rapid speech should be avoided in symbolization because people do not tend to read with that same rapidity.

(vii) such supra-segmental features which are phonemic, should be symbolized at each occurrence of the unit.

(viii) in case of such speech-sounds in loan-words which are not completely assimilated to the speech-sounds of the language, extra symbols may be added to represent these extra sounds.

In the Indian context, prescribing a uniform orthography for hitherto unwritten languages for preparing 'Literacy Primers' seems rather difficult. Problems like aspirated vs unaspirated, short vs long, nasalised vs non-nasalised etc. may be found in many Indian languages. if diacritical marks are added, these are difficult to teach. Moreover, reading materials are to be produced on normal printing presses. Queer and unusual symbols may be deterrent to rapidly producing literacy materials. In places where the minority group has some social pressure towards learning the language of the larger group, the orthography of the language of the larger-group, can be adopted without much difficulty. Many of the languages of the North Eastern states like Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh and the islands of 'India, have no orthographies of their own. Steps are to be taken to provide orthographies to these languages so that literacy materials can be prepared to augment the National Literacy Programme. The ideal would be unification of alphabets. But this may not be possible because major languages of India have their own writing systems. Therefore, a strategy has to be evolved in choosing from existing scripts for providing a written system to hitherto unwritten languages. Apart from the linguistic point of View, sociocultural factors are, also to be taken into account. The proposed writing system should be socially acceptable to the people. We have also to see that facilities of machine type setting are locally available so that literacy materials can be quickly produced.

To secure the maximum results in the minimum time an immediate assessment of the comparative merits and defects of the existing orthographies be made in each case of hitherto unwritten languages both from linguistic as well as social point of view.

Contact Info:

L.N. Mittal
S.D. College
Muzaffar Nagar, U.P.