The nations of the world yesterday observed the International Literacy Day. How and why would the highly literate nations observe It? The day gains in importance as the literacy rate diminishes in the Third World nations. It is there that the day finds its true relevance. With literacy at hardly over 40 per cent, ours is one of the worst cases where only a sustained and all-in national effort can save all the endowments and achievements of the past and put them to breaking new grounds — through first of all making these societies universally literate.

The cause of literacy has suffered here the ignominy and neglect of being tucked away as a matter wholly of bureaucratic care. That first sin has spawned all 'kinds i^coiTUption around the state arrangements for.maklpg the children and adults literate. This neglect Is most pronounced in the major political parties’ total avoidance of the issue. The two big parties, between them sharing the loyalty of more than 80 per cent of the electorate, have not cared to train one single child or person Into literacy over the last decades. Not a day passes without a bevy of the leaders of the two sermonising on the good and bad of the nation, In print and in speech. It is evident from their ceaseless exhortations that there isn't any problem here named illiteracy. It could, In these circumstances, very legitimately be suspected that the two political behemoths want Illiteracy to remain, keeping half of the nation as an easy prey for manipulation.

Literacy is not so much a matter of sustained schooling or formal education. It can be. done through organising camps and drives and other campaigns. The literacy problem is crying for a movement — a mass movement. Who but the AL and BNP and the government can launch this movement? They will find a big ally in the NGOs. The NGOs' combined experience on the literacy front will be of Immense value and help to a great national surge towards literacy. If this surge is not here by another two years, the government's claims to achievement in the education sector will be all falsity.