Saturday classes, home lessons: Mizoram road to ‘first fully literate state'

Indian Express

03-07-2025

The low benches in the school with a faded turquoise roof atop a hill in Tinghmun, a village that school teacher Robert Lalditsak says lies 'in a corner of Mizoram', were made for children aged 10 years and younger.
On a sunny morning, five middle-aged villagers sat clapping on these very benches as Laltinkimi, 54, stepped up to the blackboard. The headmaster murmuring words of encouragement in Mizo, she wrote her name in big spidery letters before turning around to beam at others.
What may seem like a modest achievement is one that she arrived at after months of classes — either before or after her long hours at the jhum (shifting cultivation farm). 'I didn't know how to read or write at all. Though it was difficult to learn at my age, I tried my best. I practised at home when I could,' she says.
Laltinkimi and 16 others from her village are among Mizoram's 425 'neo-literates', mostly adult learners from across the state who passed a Foundational Literacy and Numeracy Test (FNALT) over the past year.
Thanks to them, the state has now become India's 'first fully literate state' under the Centre's ULLAS programme, officially called the Nav Bharat Saksharta Karyakram or the New India Literacy Programme. The literacy rate in Mizoram now stands at 98.2%. According to the Ministry of Education's 2024 definition, a state can be called 'fully literate' if it achieves 95% literacy.
Kerala's literacy claim
The ULLAS programme, which has a five-year timeline aimed at non-literate people aged 15 years and above, was first implemented across the country in 2022.
However, there are competing claims on which state became 'fully literate' first based on different datasets. Kerala achieved 'total literacy' in 1991 as per the National Literacy Mission (NLM) norms, which required 90% of a state's population aged between 15 and 35 years to be literate. Kerala had claimed that 90% of its population aged between 15 and 60 years was literate back then.
Other datasets backed Kerala's claim. According to the 2011 Census, literacy in Kerala was 93.91% and 91.58% in Mizoram. Under the 'Household Social Consumption: Education' survey, a part of the National Sample Survey from July 2017 to June 2018, literacy among those aged 7 years and above in Kerala was 96.2%. This survey did not have data on Mizoram.
However, according to the Periodic Labour Force Survey's annual report from July 2023 to June 2024, Mizoram's literacy rate for those aged 7 years and above was 98.2%, while Kerala's stood at 95.3%.
Lijo George, Assistant Director, Kerala State Literacy Mission, says, 'Going by the total literacy definition of above 95%, Kerala is already fully literate. Under ULLAS, we aim to achieve 100% literacy by 2027 (end of programme period). We have identified 92,000 non-literates in the state and the core target is migrant workers.'
Race to achieve full literacy
Since Chief Minister Lalduhoma declared Mizoram as India's 'first fully literate state' recently, Andrew Lalrintluanga, Deputy Project Director, Mizoram Samagra Shiksha, the nodal agency for the programme, finds himself answering the same question repeatedly: 'Why were the final number of people who crossed this threshold so small, just a few hundred?'
Calling Mizoram's ULLAS milestone as the 'last sprint', Lalrintluanga says it was achieved 'after decades of work on literacy'.
Mizoram's literacy journey has, in fact, been something of a race. Writing in the Mizo language itself has a history of less than two centuries since languages used by these tribes did not historically have a script. It was only in 1894 that English Baptist missionaries J H Lorrain and F W Savidge codified the Mizo alphabet in the Roman script.
Academic Laltluangliana Khiangte has written about how, along with language primers, the missionaries also prepared textbooks for elementary schools and Mizo translations of Christian literature. These would have been the first steps towards literacy among the Mizo people.
On what helped Mizoram achieve its latest literacy milestone, Lalbiakdiki Hnamte, Professor, Education, Mizoram University, credits 'volunteerism and community participation'.
She says, 'We have seen many literacy programmes — from 'Operation Blackboard' to 'Each One Teach One'. After the state began collaborating with YMA (Young Mizo Association, the biggest organisation here) for implementing government programmes, everything became easier. Everyone is a member of YMA and they have branches in all villages. YMA conveys all programme information to their branches, identifies volunteers and ensures the volunteers work in mission mode,' she says.
This 'spirit of volunteerism', she says, has helped Mizoram's literacy rates grow from 0.92% in 1901 and 53.79% in the 1971 Census — fourth highest in India at the time — to 91.33% in the 2011 Census — third highest in the country.
'We are a very close-knit society. Everyone knows everyone. People always quickly fall behind what the village chief says. Even in the case of Christianity, once the chiefs converted, everyone followed quickly and the universalisation of Christianity in the community took place in a short span of time,' she adds.
The Tinghmun story
The spirit of 'community participation' that Prof Hnamte mentioned had a role to play after the launch of the ULLAS programme in 2022 in Mizoram. In August 2023, the Samagra Shiksha, Mizoram, launched surveys in the state's 11 districts to identify non-literate people aged 15 years and above. Of the 3,026 such people, 1,843 emerged as 'potential learners'.
The survey revealed a sizable cluster of non-literate people in Tinghmun village. Located in the far north-east end of the state, Tinghmun lies close to Mizoram's border with Manipur's Pherzawl district. Having a population of around 1,600, its residents blame its remote location and lack of connectivity for its sizable non-literate population.
The road till the nearest large village, Upper Sakawrdai, is still a rutted one. But, the villagers say, it did not exist at all till 2009. 'We would walk 10 km on a hilly track to reach Upper Sakawrdai. That was our sole connection to the rest of Mizoram,' says teacher Lalditsak.
After the survey for ULLAS was launched, Malsawmthanga, 42, the principal of the government-aided Tinghmun Primary School-II, and three of his friends went from house to house to map non-literates.
Malsawmthanga says 23 persons finally emerged as 'potential learners' from the village. 'The number of identified non-literates was higher but I couldn't convince everyone to learn. Some could not manage it because of their farms, while others were ashamed to learn at their age. But I encouraged them, telling them that they would finally be able to read the Bible,' he says.
Not all non-literates in Tinghmun needed convincing. One such 'potential learner' was Laldawnsang, 60. 'My parents separated when I was young. We were poor and I was the second oldest among my siblings. Instead of school, I started working on a farm and never stopped. I was excited to receive sir's (Malsawmthanga) call to learn at this age,' he says.
After the survey, like teachers across the state, Malsawmthanga started teaching potential learners in Tinghmun. Over the course of six months, he taught 23 of them, most over 35 years old, using the Mizo language primer prepared by the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), which develops curriculum for children and support materials for teachers.
Malsawmthanga says the classes took place as per the schedules of the teachers and students. 'Sometimes, I would teach for an hour or just 20 minutes. I would call them (the adult learners) to school on Saturday (a school holiday). A few times a week, I would go to one of their homes and call some of them there,' he says.
His student Laldawnsang says his children help him study now. 'I still can't type on the phone, but I can write my name now,' he says.
Seventeen of Malsawmthanga's 23 students wrote the March 2024 foundational test and were among the state's first phase of 320 'neo-literates' under this programme. Results show that most of these 'neo-literates' are women — 237 of the 320 students. Of Malsawmthanga's 17 learners who passed, 11 are women.
Lalsiamtlingi, 47, another learner, says she attended classes around her farm hours, from 9 am to 4 pm. 'It was really tiring at times, but I was determined to learn,' she says.
The medium problem
Just like the non-literate cluster in Tinghmun, the survey revealed another big group in the state's Lunglei, Lawngtlai and Mamit districts. In fact, the biggest such clusters lay in these districts, located in the state's western belt. Dominated by minority communities like the Chakmas, Brus and Lai, these districts accounted for 72% of the 'potential learners' identified during the survey in Mizoram.
Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) officials say the numbers were particularly high among the Chakmas. A minority Buddhist tribal community that has long alleged systemic discrimination within Mizoram, the Chakmas are the second largest community in the state.
After the first phase of foundational tests was cleared by 320 people in the Mizo language, the Chakma learners demanded English learning material. 'But the Chakma people don't speak or understand Mizo. Our existing study material was in Mizo. Foundational literacy is better learnt in one's mother tongue, so I had doubts about them doing these lessons and the test in English,' says M Vanhlamawii, Assistant Programme Officer, SSA, Lawngtlai.
At this, the SCERT's State Centre for Literacy started work on a new primer and worksheets in English. Classes were conducted with this revised material for these tribes. In January 2025, 105 Chakmas sat for the foundational literacy test — this time in English — and passed. They too were accounted for among the state's 425 'neo-literates'.
Vanhlamawii, however, says, a lot more remains to be done. She says she has informed senior officials in Aizawl that learning material in the learners' own language 'will help them learn faster'.
Her observation becomes relevant in light of the fact that while the Chakma language — not officially recognised by the state — is taught as a subject till Class 8 in schools under the Chakma Autonomous District Council (CADC), the medium of instruction in primary and middle schools under the council remains English.
Meanwhile, even as the state is celebrating the milestone of 'full literacy, its teachers are grappling with challenges in other key education indices, especially where their students stand with respect to those from other states.
'Our students do well in their own schools but the outcome is different when this changes. There is too much emphasis on rote learning. Mizoram is always at the bottom when it comes to the National Achievement Survey (NAS, a national-level assessment to ascertain the students' learning achievement). Our students don't do very well in NEET, JEE. The last time someone from Mizoram cleared UPSC was over a decade ago,' says Professor Hnamte, who is also the chairperson of an Education Reforms Committee formed in Mizoram last year to address these issues.
Some of the committee's planned reforms, she says, include conducting random tests in selected schools in line with the NAS assessment to see where the state is going wrong.
'We are also analysing our Class 12 science textbooks in comparison with NCERT textbooks to check for gaps. One of my research scholars is analysing our board's question papers spanning five years against the NEET exam question papers. Assessment is just one aspect. We are trying to see how we can revamp the whole system. Literacy is just a starting point,' she says.