EMPOWERMENT OF NEO-LITERATE AND NON-LITERATE WOMEN IN CACHAR DISTRICT OF ASSAM: A STUDY ON EMPOWERMENT INITIATIVES UNDERTAKEN BY JAN SHIKSHAN SANSTHAN, SILCHAR

A significant fall-out of the literacy movements undertaken in India is the absence of effective model for economic empowerment of the neo-literates and the non-literates – where, mostly the literacy movement stops with imparting literacy alone. It is a fact that literacy helps in raising the standard of livelihood, in achieving economic empowerment etc. In India, while on the one hand, we have success profiles of JSS and projects like the ‘Sunhara', undertaking empowerment initiatives through the intercoupled agenda of literacy campaign and vocational training, on the other hand, there is also a low ‘literacy-empowerment ratio' in states like Assam as is evident from various statistical figures; although the Assam's literacy rate is higher than the national average. Now, this disparity, i.e., a high literacy rate on one side and a low economicempowerment level on the other, indicates to infer that in Indian states like Assam, the literacy programmes might have failed to establish substantial linkage between literacy and livelihood. In Cachar district of Assam the literacy rate is considerably higher from the State and National average. Hence, an assessment is required as to what extent literacy and economic empowerment is complementary to each other in such a literacyadvanced district of the state. Thus, the present study is significant and seeks to investigate the achievements of literacy and vocational training programmes, in terms of achieving empowerment, undertaken by the Jan Shiksan Sansthan, Silchar in the Cachar district of Assam; and it is expected that such an assessment would help the economic planners and government policy makers to have a stock of the ground situation and find out corrective and remedial measures accordingly. The present study has revealed that the JSS, Silchar is doing commendable job in its effort to empower the neo and non-literate population of the Cachar District, though the pace of achieving real economic empowerment is not so satisfactory.