ABSTRACT
Many moons ago, as a young volunteer with the National Literacy Mission, I was part of a team involved in motivating adults in rural India to enrol in literacy classes. After performing a street play highlighting the different ways people could be cheated due to their illiteracy, an old woman stood up and posed a question to us, gently but firmly: ‘But the people depicted as cheating and exploiting were all literate – the postman, the grocer, the bus conductor. So doesn't literacy become a tool of exploitation?’ I remember the deafening silence that descended over the gathering after her question. She went on to assert that although literacy was one skill that many adults in the village lacked, there were many other tools and skills developed by them to deal with life situations that threatened their survival and community living. But why were these never talked about?
