Open letter from our reader on World Literacy Day.

We love it when our readers write to us. All views are important and welcomed. The Open Letter on World Literacy Day speaks to each one of us about something in our lives. Here goes –

“World Literacy Day with a thought about how literate are we actually?

UN has declared this year’s theme for World Literacy Day to be “Literacy in the Digital Age”. We are all hyped up and gung-ho about our so called neo-age digital lifestyles. Everyone reading this is literate and digitally so. Many in Vizag are. Compared to National statistics, we are far better off. Should we start celebrating it in Vizag already? Issues that bug us time and again. Issues we like to forget. Not talk about it, lest it come back to haunt us. Issues that make us integral with India’s literacy misdemeanours.

Is glorifying rowdiness and aggression the trait of a literate man?

Cinema has made the humblest of souls vindictive. We understand movies, we are literate enough to appreciate the finer points but what about the takeaways of hero worship and ape culture. The story to reality mind bender has to disappear as we step into the digital age with World Literacy Day. What happens in movies is to be enjoyed and not replicated into everyday life.

Competition and status over happiness and self worth.

Literacy is as the literate does. Privilege of education is woefully inadequate in India still. Vizag is doing a much better job. The powers of literacy have translated into a continuous race of who-done-it-better. That is not the bottom line. Losing peace and happiness in a cities as calm as ours is madness. Let your literacy shine in your worth as an individual.

Women targets, shine at home or work, judged anyhow.

We grow up with women figures around us. Working, home managing and otherwise. We see them in movies and in life. We grow up with them as children and serve beside in adulthood. Where lies the doubt of the literate? South India in totality and Vizag in particular respects and to a large extent deifies women. Women are happier and it is visible in society. Why glorify the achiever while demeaning the home maker? The scenario vice-versa is also true. Literate masses do not judge. They understand. More tolerance here please.

Civic sense and community living.

My home, my family, my house, my locality is an attitude rampantly observed till this day. Localities are going to dirt in the cleanest of cities in India. Public enterprises getting the rap for it is an age old problem. Traffic menace with drunk and rash driving continues and abuse of public facilities has no end.

Illiteracy in a pan-India context can be summed up in the silly question – ‘Whose problem is it anyways?” The answer to that is even sillier. “Definitely, not mine.” World Literacy Day befits us to celebrate if and when we live up to it. Let us start today, Vizag.”