40 Hours to Freedom
I traveled to India to report on literacy programs for the poor and ended up gaining a cultural literacy of my own.
Meena, a young woman draped in a bright pink sari, sits on the ground in a tiny thatched-roof house in a remote village in southern India. All eyes are focused on the 35-year-old as she reads word for word the text printed on a small medical brochure. With her hair swept back off her face, she confidently studies the pamphlet and broadcasts a wide smile as she pronounces the final few words. I can't understand what she is saying – the words are in Tamil – but her oversized grin and the encouragement of her fellow villagers say it all. She can read.
Just a few months earlier, the 20 women inside this room couldn't make out the words on a bus schedule. But after only 40 hours of study, spread out over 10 to 12 weeks, they are now functionally literate.
It is late October and the monsoon rains have started to fall. After spending the morning wading through rice paddies, I've made it to a drier village called Attanthangal, which is situated an hour outside Chennai, the city formerly known as Madras. I've come thousands of miles to talk to these women. In the past week, I've stopped at four villages and spoken with dozens of women ages 14 to 72.
The women of Attanthangal begin to pass around the pamphlet. They take turns reading aloud, proudly demonstrating their newfound skill. They look to me like students longing for the admiration of their teacher. But in their case, the teacher is an old Dell computer. Inside the computer that sits prominently atop a desk at the front of the room is a piece of software created by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a division of one of India's oldest and most philanthropic companies. In villages across India, women gather around similar computers in the late afternoon or early evening – typically after caring for their children and husband and tending to household chores – to watch graphics of words dance across the screen. By the end of the 12-week course, they are able to recognize 300 to 500 commonly used words, and that's enough to read a basic newspaper story.
When I first learned about the 40-hour program, it sounded too good to be true – like a self-help story in a women's magazine touting "40 Hours to Flat Abs." For women like Meena, who had never seen a computer until the one from Tata arrived, it is just as surprising. But as a journalist who starts the day by reading two or three newspapers, I want to believe that others can easily gain a skill that I developed as a child.
Peel away the boomtown image of tech outposts like Bangalore and Chennai and you will find a country with nearly 269 million citizens who still can't read rudimentary billboards or sign their name on a document.
In India, as in many other developing countries, adult women remain the worst off. Many illiterate women depend on others to make out the bus schedule, read to their children or discern what's written on a legal document. In one town, I met a woman who, unbeknownst to her, had signed a paper given to her by her husband that annulled their marriage. Not only did she sign away her livelihood; she had signed away her dignity too.
TCS's literacy program, a high-tech solution to an age-old problem, is the creation of Faqir Chand Kohli, a former TCS chairman. Kohli, known as one of the fathers of India's software industry, grew frustrated with the government's plan to develop a fully literate population through traditional teacher-student methods. It would take decades, he estimated, to create a fully literate population. So in 2000, Kohli, now 82, launched the computer-based literacy program based on the government's lesson plans.
Already, more than 90,000 women have learned to read by studying the software. TCS donates the computers, distributes the software, and helps small nonprofits and local governments roll out the program in villages like Attanthangal. Tata's literacy program is just one of dozens of ongoing projects designed and implemented by its employees.
"If we don't do it, no one else will," people keep reminding me.
TCS's mission goes beyond literacy, however. Once the women learn to read, the local nonprofits, with TCS's encouragement, help them apply for loans and start their own small businesses. The women of Attanthangal, for example, have launched microenterprises, such as selling detergent in the village, as Meena now does, or buying vegetables wholesale and reselling them in their local market.
Such tiny businesses might seem inconsequential to Westerners, but breaking village barriers is often more challenging than pushing through the glass ceiling. And even learning to read, which seems like a natural-born right, is at times met with resistance in some households. One woman explained that her mother-in-law had frowned on her attending the classes, but she eventually came around and supported her decision to participate in the program. Another woman told me, "My husband didn't understand why a married woman would need to read."
Literacy in India
Nearly 269 million Indian citizens still can't read rudimentary billboards or sign their name on a document, according to UNESCO. And, as is the case in other developing countries, adult women remain the worst off.
Who Can Read in India?
76% of the men
54% of the women
When do you Put Down Your Pen?
Being a journalist thrown into the world of development is eye-opening and brings with it challenges I don't typically face in my day job in Manhattan. Reporting assignments are usually straightforward. The ethics of dealing with sources are pretty clear-cut. But as a business journalist covering development issues here in India, at times I feel more like a UNICEF representative than a reporter. In most villages, I am treated like an honored guest. Bindis, the traditional Hindumark, are painted on my forehead. Some women present me with gifts or say prayers in my honor. In one of the first villages I visited, I couldn't help but fulfill a request to finance a new wheelchair-like device to help a severely handicapped young man reach the literacy course on a daily basis. Is this appropriate? Is it wrong to give aid while reporting a story? What will my conscience do if I don't? In the end, my conscience is the ultimate guide.
EDITOR'S NOTE: PINK Points for Julie Schlosser! She donated her writing fee from this story to the women's literacy project in India. To learn more, click: tataliteracy.com.
"If we don't do it, no one else will," people keep reminding me.
