ABSTRACT
In the context of social empowerment through education, adult education as a subsector of the education system could be credited to have played a very significant role in post-independent India during certain brief periods. But, as subsequent developments showed, this role of adult education in social empowerment was always fragile. It seemed that whenever the policy milieu was directly and effectively in favour of strengthening the social empowerment agenda and process through adult education, there was a conspicuous social impact. On the contrary, whenever the policy milieu was lukewarm and indifferent, whatever positive impact that adult education might have enjoyed got eroded very rapidly. Thus, it would be important to understand not only the positive social impact of adult education but also the reasons for its fragility. In the context of the only two very significant adult education programme (AEP) phases in the post-independent India, that is, the National Adult Education Programme (NAEP) during 1979–80 and to a lesser extent, the 1980s, and during the first five to six years of the National Literacy Mission (NLM)’s Total Literacy Campaigns (TLCs) from 1989, this chapter tries to discern and present the nature and extent of social empowerment. Towards this end, it locates in the policy documents and programme approaches and strategies the social groups that were to be the express clientele of literacy and AEPs. By analysing the design, organ-isational and management structures and implementation processes, it seeks to present the ways the NAEP and literacy campaigns served the social empowerment dimensions. And last, the chapter attempts to discern and abstract the limitations and challenges to any lasting scope and potential of rooting the social empowerment through literacy and adult education.
