District-wise literacy figures
District-wise
literacy figures are given in Table E 3. It can be seen that in 1981, female
literacy rates were usually lower than 30 per cent in the districts of West
Bengal (Kolkata and Howrah being
two notable exceptions); in 2001 about half the districts had reached or crossed
the 60 per cent mark However, female literacy rate continued to be lower than 40
per cent in Uttar Dinajpur and Purulia, both
with a substantial component of tribal population.
According
to information collected in 1993-94 by the National Sample Survey (NSS),
68 per cent of all rural households and 50 per cent of all urban
households did not have any literate adult women (aged 15 years or more). The
proportion of such households in West Bengal was 56 and 38 respectively,
somewhat better than India as a whole or the neighbouring states of Bihar and
Orissa, as shown in Table 4.
Table
E 5 brings out a less heartening feature regarding progress of literacy in West
Bengal, specially with reference to
rural women. We do not yet have community-wise literacy figures for West Bengal
at the district level from the 2001
census, but those from the preceding census points to the educational
deprivation that characterises the scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST)
communities in each of the districts. For the state as whole, the 1991 literacy
rate for all rural women was 38 per cent ; but comparable figures for ST and SC
women were only 14 and 26 per cent respectively. In Malda and Birbhum, only 5
per cent among ST women were reported to be literate in 1991.Similarly, urban
literacy figures for all women , ST women and SC women were 68, 32 and 43
respectively.