Gandhiji walked 240 miles for 23 days and picked up salt in 1930. Hundreds of thousands followed him, and the history of India changed. You do not have to walk 240 miles. Do not pick up salt. Pick up a book and read with some children for 23 days.
Their lives will be changed forever. Hundreds of thousands will join, and history of India will change, once again.

The Government of India, has declared the goal of ensuring that every Indian child completes eight years of education by 2010. By 2003 (!) all children 6-14 to be in school. By 2007, all children finish five years of education, and eight years of education by 2010. Latest figures show that about 11 out 100 Indian children do not enter school, another 35 drop out before completing 4-5 years of education, and another 30 dropout before reaching grade VIII. Less than half of the remaining finish their SSC.

There is another story behind the official figures, which never makes it to government reports or the press. Pratham has conducted door to door surveys of 6-14 year old children in nearly 100,000 slum households of Mumbai and six other cities of Maharashtra (one of the better providers of education in India). Only 6% of these children are not in school. Yet, the numbers show that about 23% children can read paragraphs with varied fluency. 33% can read words but not sentences. 27% can identify alphabets but no more, and the remaining 17% can read nothing. Compared to this, in North Indian cities of Jaipur, Delhi, Allahabad, Lucknow and Patna, our experience shows that the numbers of children reading paragraphs and words drop to half.

Experience of many education NGOs, including mass scale India-wide experience of Pratham, clearly indicates that it is the poor quality of learning in schools that leads to dropping out. Unless education in government schools becomes effective, there is little hope that India will achieve its goal of getting every child in school.

Professor Jalaluddin, an internationally recognized expert has shown on large scale that children who cannot read and write can do so in a matter of 3 months. Along the same lines, Pratham experiments show that children who can read words or letters but not paragraphs can start reading with comprehension in a matter of 15-30 days with some very simple reading practice and lots of books. Most experts believe that any focussed activity in schools is bound to give results.

So, HOW can we get every Indian child reading in the shortest possible time?

Pratham, a platform that unites NRIs, top Indian corporates, very senior ex-administrators, and thousands of young women from urban slums, provides some answers. Get children proficient in the 3 R's through combined voluntary and government efforts, provide new and good books in huge numbers, insist on governmental reports at all levels on basic literacy skills in schools, and actively help the schools to maintain and improve in learning skills.