Saakshar Bharat: Transforming Adult Education through Innovation and Inclusivity

India’s 2011 Census showed a literacy rate of 74.04%, but nearly 26 crore adults still could not read or write, and most of them were women. Saakshar Bharat was the government’s answer to this gap. Launched to build on the older National Literacy Mission, it went beyond teaching alphabets and numbers. It tried to create a genuine culture of lifelong learning in rural India, with special attention to women, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and other marginalised groups. Here’s a closer look at how the scheme was designed and what made it different from earlier literacy drives.

What was Saakshar Bharat? 🔗

Saakshar Bharat was a centrally sponsored scheme launched by the Government of India on 8 September 2009, coinciding with International Literacy Day. It was administered by the National Literacy Mission Authority under the then Ministry of Human Resource Development, now the Ministry of Education. The scheme replaced the earlier National Literacy Mission and was implemented in districts where female literacy stood at 50% or below, based on 2001 Census data, since these were the areas with the widest gender gap in education.

Unlike one-time literacy campaigns, Saakshar Bharat was structured as a continuous mission. It ran from 2009 until it was formally discontinued from the 2018-19 financial year, having certified over 7.6 crore adults as literate during its run. Its core idea was simple: literacy is not just about reading a newspaper. It is about giving adults the tools to participate meaningfully in economic and civic life.

Objectives and focus of the scheme 🔗

Saakshar Bharat set itself an ambitious national target: raising the overall literacy rate to 80% and narrowing the gender gap in literacy to 10 percentage points. To reach this, the mission worked on four connected goals.

Functional literacy 🔗

The first priority was teaching adults to read, write, and do basic arithmetic well enough to manage everyday tasks like reading a bus timetable, filling a form, or checking change at a shop. This wasn’t rote learning. It was literacy tied directly to situations adults actually face.

Vocational skills 🔗

The scheme recognised that literacy alone does not put food on the table. So it paired basic education with skill development, helping neo-literates pick up trade or livelihood skills that could improve their income.

Lifelong learning 🔗

Saakshar Bharat also pushed the idea that education doesn’t stop with a certificate. It encouraged adults to keep learning through continuing education programmes, equivalency courses aligned with formal schooling, and community learning spaces that stayed active well after someone became “literate.”

Gender and social inclusion at the core 🔗

Women were the primary focus of Saakshar Bharat, and this wasn’t incidental. The scheme’s district selection criteria itself targeted regions with the lowest female literacy, meaning the areas with the greatest gender disparity got priority coverage. Within these districts, enrolment lists were expected to be heavily weighted towards women, alongside people belonging to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and other minority and disadvantaged communities.

This inclusive design extended to how the programme was run on the ground. Each Adult Education Centre was staffed by two paid coordinators, called Preraks, and the scheme mandated that at least one of them be a woman. This wasn’t just symbolic. It made the learning space feel safer and more accessible for women who might otherwise hesitate to step into an unfamiliar, male-dominated environment. By weaving gender and social equity into eligibility criteria, staffing, and outreach, Saakshar Bharat tried to correct decades of educational exclusion rather than simply adding a token women’s component.

How the program framework worked 🔗

Saakshar Bharat operated through four distinct programmes, each targeting a different stage of an adult learner’s journey.

Functional Literacy Programme 🔗

This was the entry point, teaching non-literate adults to read, write, and handle basic arithmetic within a fixed, time-bound schedule.

Basic Education Programme 🔗

Once learners crossed the functional literacy stage, this component helped them acquire knowledge and skills equivalent to classes three through eight, effectively bridging the gap to formal schooling standards.

Vocational Education Programme 🔗

This offered practical, income-oriented skill training, connecting literacy gains to real livelihood opportunities in areas like tailoring, food processing, or basic computer use, depending on local demand.

Continuing Education Programme 🔗

The final piece kept the learning momentum going through community libraries, discussion groups, and awareness sessions on topics like health, legal rights, and civic responsibilities.

Lok Shiksha Kendras: the delivery point 🔗

All four programmes came together at the village level through Adult Education Centres, popularly called Lok Shiksha Kendras. One centre was established for roughly every 5,000 people, typically housed within Gram Panchayat buildings for easy local access. Beyond classes, these centres doubled as registration points, libraries, reading rooms, and venues for cultural and sports activities, making them genuine community hubs rather than just classrooms.

The entire structure was held together by a four-tier administrative chain: the National Literacy Mission Authority set policy and released funds at the top, State Literacy Missions adapted strategy to regional needs, District Lok Shiksha Samitis supervised enrolment drives and quality control, and the village-level centres delivered the actual teaching. This layered design meant decisions could be tailored to local realities while still following a common national framework.

Keeping literacy demand alive 🔗

A literacy mission only works if people actually want to enrol and stay enrolled. Saakshar Bharat relied heavily on social mobilisation to generate this demand. Village-level bodies conducted household surveys to identify non-literate adults, then ran mass mobilisation drives using local volunteers, community meetings, and awareness campaigns to convince families that education was worth the time investment, especially for women who often had the least free time in a household.

Community engagement went further than enrolment. Panchayati Raj Institutions, NGOs, and civil society groups were expected to work alongside government machinery, since local trust mattered more than top-down instructions in convincing hesitant families. Preraks, being local residents themselves, played a dual role as teachers and motivators, which helped reduce dropout rates in a programme that depended entirely on voluntary participation.

Technology, though limited by today’s standards, also found a place in the framework. Centres maintained learner progress data, and coordinators were expected to have basic computer literacy to track enrolment and outcomes. This laid some of the groundwork for the far more digitally integrated approach seen in India’s current literacy programme.

What came after Saakshar Bharat 🔗

Saakshar Bharat wound down in 2018-19, but the need it addressed did not disappear. In 2022, the government launched ULLAS, or the New India Literacy Programme, aligned with the National Education Policy 2020, running through 2027. It carries forward Saakshar Bharat’s five core ideas: foundational literacy and numeracy, critical life skills, vocational skills, basic education, and continuing education, while adding a stronger digital layer through the DIKSHA portal and a dedicated mobile app for learning content in regional languages.

The Cell for National Centre for Literacy at NCERT now develops teaching resources for this newer mission, showing how institutional expertise built during Saakshar Bharat’s years continues to shape adult education strategy today. Some administrative units, including Ladakh, Goa, and Mizoram, have since been declared fully literate under this successor scheme, a milestone that traces its roots directly back to the groundwork laid between 2009 and 2018.

Why this history still matters 🔗

Saakshar Bharat’s real contribution wasn’t just the literacy certificates it issued. It demonstrated that adult education works best when it is decentralised down to the village level, when women and marginalised groups are placed at the centre of design rather than added as an afterthought, and when literacy is linked to livelihood rather than treated as an abstract goal. These lessons directly shaped how India structured its next literacy mission, and they remain relevant for anyone studying extension education as a field built on community participation.

What do you think? Do you think a scheme built around paid local coordinators, like the Preraks, works better than one relying purely on volunteers? And as India moves towards app-based literacy tools under newer schemes, what happens to learners in areas with poor internet access or low digital familiarity?

References

1. https://www.education.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/upload_document/Annexure-14_Scheme-discontinued-Saakshar-Bharat-Brief-Note.pdf
2. https://directoradulteducation.assam.gov.in/portlets/saakshar-bharat-mission-sbm
3. https://www.uil.unesco.org/en/litbase/saakshar-bharat-mission-india
4. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressNoteDetails.aspx?NoteId=151922&ModuleId=3&reg=3&lang=1
5. https://ncert.nic.in/cncl/