TCS’s war against illiteracy

Over the years, the Tatas’ contribution to social causes has been immense. Now TCS is carrying on the mission with its new software designed to eradicate illiteracy, a problem that affects a huge chunk of India’s population—300 million people. Frederick Noronha reports

What do we do with the 300 million illiterates in India who can speak their native languages but cannot read or write? Do we see them merely as empty stomachs and a burden on the nation? Or is this an untapped potential that can be converted into 600 million useful hands?

If a project by software giant Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) can find the right partners, and hit critical mass, then this large section could be converted into productive individuals who could read signboards, and maybe even the simple text of a newspaper, in 40 hours of learning-time.

Retired Major-General B G Shively’s recent mission to the Goan port town of Vasco da Gama saw him take on an unusual enemy—illiteracy. It also took to India’s smallest state an innovative campaign that brings enticingly near the dream of making India fully literate.

Declares Pune-based Shively, "Every adult has inborn qualities and intelligence. You only have to activate it." This military man—now consulting advisor to the TCS literacy plan—suggests that the computer can turn into a magic wand of sorts to spread reading skills without the need for a huge army of teachers.

Quite some work has already been done by TCS in Andhra Pradesh with Telugu. Hindi, Marathi, Tamil and Bengali are the other languages being worked on. Gujarati is shaping up. This means India could become functionally literate in just three to four years if—and this is a big if—the TCS method is vigorously implemented.

How does it work? Simple. TCS is using low-end computers to take the monotony out of teaching, piggy-backing on the initiatives already undertaken by the National Literacy Mission (NLM), and treating adults very differently from children when it comes to teaching them.

A few rules: Don’t make an adult sit for tests, and don’t get caught up with writing, since the difficulties involved act as a major disincentive. Instead, focus on reading skills. And remember that adults can’t be made to study alphabets like children, who unquestioningly take to it.

"One-third of our population—the elderly, young and adults—is illiterate. Of this, some 150-200 million are adult illiterates between 15-50 years. Illiteracy is a major social concern," says Shively. Growing at roughly 1.3 percent per annum, literacy is creeping in just too slowly to make a difference for India’s efficiency. That’s where, says TCS, computers come in.

Software generated by TCS, which is given to volunteer groups free of cost, tries to teach adults to read a language by words rather than the traditional method of learning by alphabets.

In Goa Shipyard, one of India’s defence sector-run shipbuilding centres, the concept recently drew interest. 60 workers enrolled to learn the most important of the three R’s. However, Andhra Pradesh is the state where this project has made the most progress.

"There’s almost nothing for the teacher to explain. Everything is in the software, so teachers can run 5-6 one-hour classes in a day without getting tired. You don’t need a trained teacher because of the software," explains Shively.

According to the former general, in 40 hours flat, an illiterate can be turned into a ‘functional literate.’ This will enable a person to read simple newspaper headlines, check out bus directions, read signboards and the like. Hopefully, such skills could be deepened over time.

The idea is presented on the site www.tataliteracy.com, and TCS says it has got a good response even from a few companies which want to gift literacy to their workers. To avoid re-inventing the wheel, TCS is working together with the government-run NLM primers.

So what happens if literacy comes in 40 hours instead of 200? Drop-out rates are lower. It wouldn’t take India another 20-25 years to touch 90 percent
literacy (three to four years are enough with the software method, says TCS), and the ‘demotivating factors’ are knocked off. Also, the lack of trained teachers is no longer a bottleneck.

Effective linkages

The project has been talked about for some time now. This writer first read about it in mid-2000. Maybe it has not spread far and wide because of a lack of effective linkages with those who could take it ahead, particularly non-profit organisations and corporates which share the vision. Also, having the software under the General Public Licence could perhaps make it easily shareable, improvable, and yet make clear the major contribution put in by TCS.

Considering our record in the 56 years since independence, it makes good sense to make computers our ally in fighting illiteracy. Comparing China with India, TCS argues, "Apart from other factors that build the economy, it would appear that the level of literacy affects the economy in many dimensions." Between 1990 and 2000, India’s literacy crept up from 52.5 percent to just 65.5 percent. In this time, China’s grew from 73 to 92 percent, Malaysia’s touched 87 percent, Thailand’s 95 percent, and South Korea’s 99 percent.

"At the rate we are progressing, it will take at least another 30 years to reach a literacy level of 90-95 percent," TCS points out. To come out with an innovative solution, a team lead by TCS’s F C Kohli, and including P N Murthy and K V Nori, has been studying how to make a low-cost, technology-based effective solution to India’s literacy problem.

The TCS goal is to give a 300-500 word vocabulary to learners in their own languages, a skill which could enable them to read a simple newspaper. The idea is to help adults learn by building an association between sounds and their graphic presentation. To do this, familiar words and their written forms are broken down into syllables and their sounds.

Explains TCS, "This method focuses on reading, the most important of the three R’s in literacy. Once this is achieved, a person can accelerate learning to the other R’s through the use of the reading skill. Thus, the reading ability is expected to act as a trigger to develop the full measure of literacy."

CBFL, or Computer-Based Functional Literacy, as TCS calls it, uses animated graphics and a voice-over to explain how individual alphabets combine to give structure and meaning to various words. It is designed from educational material developed by the NLM. The CBFL method employs puppets or lively images in the teaching process.

Lessons are customised to fit different languages. They focus on reading, and are based on theories of cognition, language and communication. "With the emphasis on learning words rather than alphabets, the project addresses thought processes with the objective of teaching these words in as short a time as possible. The settings for the lessons are visually-stimulating, and crafted in a manner that learners can easily relate to," say the project
promoters.

Voice-overs reinforce the learner’s ability to grasp the lessons easily, and repetition adds to the strengthening of what is already learned. The method is implemented by using computers and ‘flashcards’ (small cards with the alphabets written on them). The computer delivers the lessons (‘shows’) in multimedia form to the learners, while the flashcards, which have letters printed on them, support the process by fortifying what has been absorbed, and by helping beneficiaries memorise what they have learned.

Advantages of this approach include:

• Acceleration in the pace of learning to read (it takes about one-third the time that writing-oriented methods require).
• Flexibility in adjusting to individual learning speeds.
• Lower drop-out rates in comparison with other adult literacy programmes.
• No requirement of trained teachers or large-scale infrastructure.
• Can be conducted on computers powered by processors as old as the 486 (this is the kind of PC that many organisations can afford to give away).
• Can effectively enhance existing adult-literacy programmes.
• The multimedia format ensures that the pronunciation of the words/letters is taught accurately through the system, rather than being left to individual teachers. This is particularly useful for languages like Tamil, where the same letter can be pronounced differently, based on the context. (See www.tataliteracy.com/how_it_works.htm).