AP Literacy Rate At 66% – Worst In The Nation

Andhra Pradesh literacy rate of 66.4% is the worst among all states in India, lower than Bihar’s 70.9%.

Telangana’s literacy rate of 72.8% is also well below the national average of 77.7% while Assam is beyond the average mark, at 85.9%. Karnataka’s literacy rate of 77.2% pales in comparison to Uttarakhand’s 87.6%.

The data relating to education for the period 2017-18 was released by the National Statistical Office (NSO) and it revealed that in case of literacy, notions of “developed states” can be misleading.

National Statistical Office submits report

The report was concerning all aged 7 or more. Kerala remains to some extent the best among the major states with a literacy rate of 96.2%. Significantly, the gap between male and female literacy is the smallest in Kerala at just 2.2 percentage points. To put that in perspective, the gap at the all-India level is 14.4 percentage points with male literacy at 84.7% and female literacy at 70.3%.

Meanwhile, Andhra Pradesh had a gap between male and female literacy rates of only 13.9 percentage points. Rajasthan had male-female literacy rate gap of 23.2 percentage points, Bihar 19.2 and UP 18.4, which indicate pronounced divide even when the overall literacy rates of these states are better.

The gap between urban and rural literacy rates is of the same order of magnitude as that between males and females. Once again, Kerala registered the lowest gap of 1.9 percentage points.

In Telangana, the urban literacy is 23.4 percentage points higher than rural literacy and in Andhra Pradesh, the difference is 19.2 percentage points.

The combined effect of the gender and urban-rural skews means that the difference between urban male literacy and rural female literacy is an alarming 27.2 percentage points at the national level. In individual states, the difference figures can be much worse.

The TDP claims that it had taken up many development works and ensured the welfare of all sections of the people. As the TDP was in the ruling in AP during this time, it seems Chandrababu Naidu can be blamed for neglecting the education sector.