TARA Akshar+: The Miracle Literacy Tech

After high leadership positions in the Indian Government and United Nations, I, Dr Ashok Khosla, founded the world’s first social enterprise, Development Alternatives (DA) in 1982. Its mission is to build a broad multi-disciplinary professional capacity to design and implement systemic solutions for sustainable development in a low-income economy.  Skills in the organization range from agronomy, engineering, and sciences, through sociology, anthropology, and GIS to policy analysis, economics and business management. Over 35 years, I have pushed the theory and practice of sustainable development through teaching and entrepreneurship, aiming to inspire innovation and delivery of environmentally friendly and commercially viable technologies. As Chairman, my job is to build a world-class team, which now numbers several hundred highly motivated professionals. I am considered a global pioneer in environmental policy, resource efficiency, appropriate/frugal technology and have guided Development Alternatives to become a world leader in green technologies applicable to impoverished rural communities.   

India, like most low-income nations, still has very high numbers of illiterate people, particularly women, and more particularly women in rural communities, who are therefore deprived of their fundamental rights to a decent livelihood and to meaningful participation in society.   Being able to read, write and calculate are skills that are truly and immediately liberating, empowering a person to get a job, understand and sign a financial document and get the correct change from the shopkeeper.  Numerous studies by the World Bank, UNESCO and others show that literacy is a critical factor in speeding up and deepening economic development and universalising its benefits.  Thus, Development Alternatives, under its mandate to empower communities, developed the TARA Akshar+ program to spread literacy in rural and peri urban spaces. Wherever we have implemented this programme, we have demonstrably reduced the gender gap, ensured basic education to all and helped enhance livelihoods and leadership.

According to the World’s Women 2015 Report, of the 781 million adults who were illiterate worldwide, 496 million, i.e., two in three, were women, and three out of five of those, 297 million women, were in India.  Worse, the average female illiteracy rate in rural India is over 50%, and still worse, in some States, such as Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, where Development Alternatives has its largest interventions, more than 55 per cent of the adult women were illiterate (Census of India, 2011).  Even before COVID-19 hit the Indian economy, the number of illiterate women had been actually growing, due in part to the overall rise in population and in part because, for various reasons, girls tend to drop out  of school disproportionately.  Earlier literacy programmes were too poorly designed, slow, ineffective and costly to make much of a dent in the numbers. This unacceptably high gender imbalance imposes huge social and economic costs, not just in terms of lost productivity but also in how negatively it affects the community water and sanitation, family hygiene and health, economic production, child welfare, family planning, and housing etc., since illiterate women cannot participate meaningfully in development programmes.  

TARA Akshar Plus (TA+) is an intensive ICT enabled literacy and numeracy programme enabling illiterate people to read, write and do simple arithmetic, using advanced learning and memory techniques. Within 56 days of highly instructive and entertaining 2-hour classes held locally in the village, the learner acquires sufficient literacy and numeracy skills to be able to read simple books, write letters, verify her shopping and banking transactions and go on to learn highly valuable job-related skills.  Saving some two years and huge costs, which other teaching programs require, TA+ is demonstrably able to position its graduates to become respected members of their families and effective leaders in their communities.  To prevent recidivism, the learners are invited to a six-month “Gyan Chaupali”, the continuing club for alumni to consolidate the skills they have acquired.   Here, women gather, share and discuss issues of concern, have access to books and other relevant literature, and continue their learning and growth. They learn how to improve their family’s lives on subjects such as health, hygiene, legal rights, livelihood and other issues.  The women are also taught to fill forms, a daily necessity to access government schemes and to write letters to demand their rights. 

Since TA+ began (2010), it has taught over 235,000 totally illiterate rural women to read, write and count.  They are spread over more  than 800 villages in 8 States of Northern India. The communities DA has served are among the most marginalized, vulnerable and negatively impacted by globalization,  having among the worst indices for health, education, employment and gender inequality.  The programme employs well-defined technology but is anchored integrally in the Community, beginning with mobilization of students, to involvement of local instructors and supporters -- and responsibility for longer-term continuation of the benefits gained.

The highly positive impacts of the TA+ programme widely observed include:

a. Enhanced literacy and numeracy level of adult learners, often leading to leadership positions in the local government;

b. Improved participation in the democratic and economic institutions of the village, such as voting in elections, cleanliness drives, plantation of trees etc.;

c. Better decision-making – on mobility, participation, reproductive health, children’s marriage, education, jobs,  finances, communications, rights, etc

d. Broader impact on community life - in emergencies such as disasters, pandemics, etc., and social ills such as violence, drugs and delinquency;

e. Increased awareness of opportunities for livelihoods, jobs, entrepreneurship and community wealth and wellbeing.

Despite the 42 year since the National Adult Education Programme (NAEP) was launched in 1978, and the many other programs added, such as the Rural Functional Literacy Programme (RFLP), National Literacy Mission (NLM), Saakshar Bharat Abhiyan, India still has over 287 million adult illiterates. This large number is ever more marginalised and deprived of the benefits of the nation’s development.  Efforts to improve their skills and earnings need better basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic.  TA+ provides a second chance to them to literate and educate themselves, understanding the world around them, participate as active citizens in their communities.

One major purpose of DA is to identify gaps in our understanding of what people consider a better life and future, and in our social institutions that can allow people to achieve such a life and future.  From our inception, we felt, as did the Japanese after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, that it was too costly for people as individuals and for the nation as a whole to have any citizen not capable of reading and writing.  More than half the population of India at the time was illiterate.  We worked on various ways to overcome this, but it was only around 2007, that a British co-worker, Victor Johnson, helped us innovate a highly sophisticated tool, now called TARA Akshar, for making it extremely easy for anyone to learn to read and write.  DA then set up a system to refine the tool and deliver it to large numbers of learners in remote communities.  The delivery system was just as important for the phenomenal success of the programme as the innovative too itself.  This network, structured, set up and managed along army principles was run with total dedication by a retired Colonel of the army, MS Ahluwalia.

What drives this project, me, and indeed DA as a whole, as a total 24*7*52 commitment, is a strong sense of outrage at the inequities, injustices and indignities faced by so many of our fellow citizens, in India and around the world.  And a concomitant sense of hope in our capacity to innovative and deliver, affordable and highly scalable solutions to these wrongs.  Mass illiteracy is emblematic of the social wrongs. (It is also a huge cost to society).  Only the next generation can benefit from the growing school enrolments – older people need other means of learning to become active participants in society and the economy.  And innovative learning tools, based on information and communication technology (ICT) are the means to righting the wrongs in Northern India. We have seen badly treated, downtrodden, totally marginalized women acquire new selfhood, and become dignified housewives and community leaders after getting the skills and jobs that were enabled by our literacy projects in remote communites.  There is no substitute for the rewards of seeing down and out lives totally transformed.  Our program is designed for nationwide application and has no particular reason for geographical preferences. We hope that it can go global.

Over more than 35 years of operation, DA has been one of the major pioneers and flag bearers of the concept of environmental and inclusive sustainability. It has worked single-mindedly for eradication of poverty and regeneration of the environmental resource base with practical solutions based on advanced, science-based technology and institutional innovations.  It is one of the world’s leaders in innovating “frugal technologies” aimed at bringing hi-tech ideas to solve simple village problems of lives and livelihoods.  The programs beyond TA+, and these innovations include widely recognized work on sustainable livelihood creation programmes while delivering various basic needs such as affordable shelter, renewable energy, waste management, water and sanitation, health including nutrition, natural resource management and improved farming practices.  These have received over USD 300 Million in funding from the Indian Government, international foundations, bilateral agencies, World Bank and the UN system, and various corporations.  Besides having the strength of on-ground implementation (exemplified through our work in Bundelkhand), we also have the strength & capacity to manage large flagship programmes for organisations. One example was the Poorest Areas Civil Society Programme with USD 55 Million from the UK Government, wherein, over a period of seven years, through a network of 650 CSOs across 7 states, over 6 Million families were benefited.  With 14 years of experience and grants of more than USD 20 Million, including USD 16 Million from the Ikea Foundation, we have built up a highly successful product and a robust delivery system for delivery and implementation.

The whole story of DA is one of overcoming the adversities faced by any Cassandra or Changemaker.  Questioning the status quo and promoting solutions that are counter to prevailing interests is never easy.  It is even harder when the shortcomings of the present system are not yet fully visible and the victims have no voices of their own.  As a specific example, since TA+ deals with women, it was initially difficult to move them out of their home due to entrenched patriarchal systems and deep rooted and rigid beliefs on the role of women. Our team, took help of local stakeholders, connected with the families, looped in local administration to reach out the women. It required a lot of rigorous meetings, convincing and persuasions. Local community partners were on boarded. Once TA+ interventions started, they instilled confidence in these women who started to understand the importance of taking their own decisions. This positive trickledown effect resulted in engaging more and more women. In fact, now we have neo-literates even contesting for local village government elections. Due to the growing numbers of these neo-literates, even local administrations engage them in carrying out activities related to government’s development and welfare programme.

As a teaching fellow with Professor Roger Revelle, I helped design and teach the first university-level course on Environment and Development, at Harvard.  Al Gore refers frequently to it in his film “Inconvenient Truth”.  Subsequently, as first head of India’s Environment Office, I could use the opportunity of the position to introduce radical ideas and changes that normally were thought impossible.  One of these was a complete systems-base restructuring of the Delhi transport system, which became an example of global best practice.  Then, while at UNEP, developed and managed InfoTERRA, the world’s first global environmental information system.  1983, I set up Development Alternatives (DA) as a social enterprise, that would make good business out of delivering environmentally sound development.  Recognizing that 70% of the people of India lived in villages, we felt that the bulk of the actions of industry and civil society must address their needs. As a result, it combined the social objectives of an NGO with the profit-orientation (and management discipline) of a private sector business. This created a fundamentally new niche in the Indian economy for a whole new breed of organizations, Social Enterprises which can meet social objectives in a scalable and sustainable manner. 

TARA Akshar + is a breakthrough innovation that is truly transformative, both in its method of working and in its impact.  The techniques used to teach reading, writing and arithmetic are cutting edge approaches developed in recent years by people like Edward Bono, Tony Buzan and others in using a variety of highly effective “memory hooks” and multi-sensory (audio-visual-tactile) approaches to involve the learner at all levels.  Carefully designed materials for both the computer-based part (animated stories, morphing letters and objects, etc), and the traditional materials part (copy books, reading books, flash cards, posters, etc) constantly reinforce learning habits and outcomes.  To solve the problem of recidivism, a continuing education program, Gyan Chaupali provides several months of reinforcement and additional knowledge sharing.  Further, highly effective delivery system, based on modules that bring the product to the learner by setting up a teaching centre directly in her village, partnerships with local NGOs to ensure good relationships with the community and staff familiar with local linguistic nuances, a cadre of supervisors and quality control inspectors to ensure smooth functioning of the centres and detailed monitoring by the headquarters of each centre each day make this “army-style” operation highly successful.  The best evidence of true innovation is the phenomenal success rate (more than 95% of the students have passed government supervised tests), the extreme interest (more than 1000 media clippings and news items) and the very low cost (less than USD 150 per learner).  And the impacts on the lives of the learners.

Development Alternatives was created in response to the manifest inability of Governments, Businesses, Academia or small local NGOs working alone to deal at scale with the primary threats faced by the citizens of rural India: poverty and the lack of jobs on the one hand and the massive degradation of the resource base (soils, water, forests, etc) on the other.  Set up as a “Sustainability Solutions Lab”, DA built up a highly competent multi-disciplinary team to develop innovative, practical and replicable solutions to the problems of rural communities and environment and apply these on the ground in partnership with local communities and NGOs, with financial support raised from governments, foundations, international development agencies, and corporates.  Substantively, DA’s theory of change as a social enterprise is predicated on: a participative approach to generate local relevance and contribution, a science-grounded approach to ensure a solid basis for innovating and designing solutions, a systems approach to generate synergies, a nature-based approach to maximise use of ecosystem services and possibility for sustainability, and a multi-stakeholder partnership approach to ensure the coherence and cooperation needed to get the maximum multipliers.  It also designs and advocates sustainability solutions at the local, national and international levels for reducing ecological footprints by means that redress the current imbalance favouring centralised vs local management, top-down vs bottom-up thinking and support, big vs small initiatives, and government or corporate vs people’s ownership of the solutions.  Where possible, we try to create effective partnerships with governments and corporations to leverage resources to implement programs on the ground.  TARA, a B-Corp type enterprise was established in 1985, to incubate, productionise and commercialise the sustainability solutions – particularly appropriate technologies – innovated by DA. TARA’s aim from beginning has been to introduce methods and machine into the rural economy that can increase the productivity of human effort and of the natural resources such as land and water.  By increasing productivity and reducing drudgery through the use of these technologies and other solutions, TARA strives to create more meaningful and remunerative jobs and therefore purchasing power enabling rural people to improve their living conditions.  

At the height of TA+ operations, we had 435 Centres; 50,000 Learners.                                                      

During the COVID-19 lockdown, we have been greatly hampered in carrying on with our field centres.

Prior to the lockdown, we had about 35 Centres, mostly in 3 States of India with 1260 Learners, as the large project funded by the IKEA Foundation is coming to an end and new projects have not yet kicked in.

In principle, the modular design and the army-type structure and formation, with the highly monitored management system (made possible at very low cost by modern communication and analysis technology) permit us to imagine running a cohort of some 300 centres, each with 3 classes per day, each with 12 learners.  [At the peak of our operations, we had already reached more than half of this.]  With 5 cohorts a year, the number of learners we could produce annually with this configuration would be about 40,000 to 50,000. This is a reasonably large number but in terms of the overall problem a mere scratch on the surface.  With assurance of sustained support, TA+ could make the front-end investment to take the number of centres to a thousand, in which case we would be turning out some 150,000 literates per year.

Again, with sufficiently robust financing, growing at some 20% per year, in 5 years, we should reach half a million women per year and a cumulative of over one million for many of whom lives will have been totally transformed.

As state above, the primary simple goal is to make a real dent into the illiteracy problem of India.  Given the demographics of the country, it will be some forty years before those who are illiterate today will have naturally grown beyond retirement age and have been replaced by their literate progeny.  So, this is not a very long term problem but its magnitude and likely duration make it well worth solving speedily.  Too many people in the economy are both suffering sub-optimal lives and unable to contribute their full potential to national development.  Within this specific project, TA+, we will therefore continue to accelerate delivery of the product until we have saturated the market in roughly three or four decades.  In the meantime, we have developed and are also delivering the “next steps” courses for those who have become literate – life skills, livelihood skills, employability skills, entrepreneurship skills and entrepreneurship supports.  Our intent is to leverage government and corporate support to enable every single citizen who so wishes, to get meaningful, dignified, “decent” work.  Literacy and income generation are only two of DA’s programme, and these are being dovetailed with the other work we do, particularly in the fields of shelter, energy, water and sanitation, etc.  Our effort is that everyone in India meets at least the first dimension of the Elevate Prize.

What perception and ideological barriers that used to exist for our type of work from the powers whose interests were vested in the status quo, might, ironically, be somewhat lowered because of the structural shortcomings in the economy that have become visible for all to see.  We are no longer entirely Cassandra and our Changemaking role is less threatening than before.  But this can only be for a short time before the neoclassical economists and neoliberal policy makers regain their short-sighted vision of the world.  So, it is imperative for DA and TA+ to move forward fast, for which we need substantial financial and moral support.  Having designed the profile of the DA group to be somewhat below the radar, we have not been badly affected by the legal or regulatory hurdles governments place in the way of change agents.  By and large, our cultural aspirations converge, indeed coincide with those of our “clients” the marginalised villager, so there is not much of a hurdle to overcome in that respect.  The main issue we face is that marketing is a major cost of doing business and big finance is not an area we have on our side.  Our strategy for this is to try and demonstrate to both government(s) and business(es) that it is in their not-so-long term interest to support our type of enterprise: we can only create more income for their taxes and profits respectively.

As stated above, the main barrier that we face, as we have faced over several recent years, mainly since the officially promoted tightening up of overseas money flows to civil society organizations, is lack of financial resources and financing sources we can access.  We do not consider any of the other barriers as serious challenges.  As explained below, in the question on our business model, we have from the beginning three decades ago, set up mechanisms to valorize and monetize our knowledge assets through making royalty income and consultancy revenues through our incubation partner, Technology and Action for Rural Advance (TARA).  Once the innovations designed by DA and incubated and marketed by TARA become commercially profitable, the revenue streams to DA are expected to be substantial, allowing DA to invest in more R&D and innovation programs.  Unfortunately of all the technologies and products designed by DA, the one that does not have a clear business model – in the sense of becoming profitable from revenues earned directly from the end user.  It is commercially viable only if the costs are covered by third parties, either as philanthropic donations or project grants.  In the past, such grants supported the program well but other issues are now competing with literacy for the limited funds available.  With the Elevate Prize money, and the partnerships made through it we would market the concept of large return to society on investments in spreading literacy to establish long term relationship with philanthropic and CSR funding sources.

Currently we are in partnership with IKEA Foundation and working across the states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand & Madhya Pradesh in India. Third phase of the adult literacy programme started in 2017 and is due to complete by the end of 2020. The goal was to make 20,000 women functionally literate. We have successfully achieved our target learners and are in our last cycles of Gyan Chaupali’s. For this phase, we are working on field collaboratively with Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) namely Sai Jyoti, SARTHAK & Village Development Society in Uttar Pradesh & Uttarakhand.

Illiterate people are by definition poor people.  If they could afford to pay for learning to read and write many of them would do so.  As the Japanese understood already in 1868, however, literacy is not just an individual right – it is, like roads and infrastructure, a public good, a social asset, and if necessary, society should pay for it.  As broadly indicated in some of the earlier responses, the DA Group, comprising DA and TARA was set up to do what non-profits do but in a business-like manner – a sort of B-Corp, operating in a country without legislation permitting B-Corps.  With some ingenuity, we have been able to make a very large impact on the lives of very large (numbering in the millions) of people, and earning reasonable returns to enable us to build our business over time.  But in the case of literacy, the enterprise route does not seem to be available unless we consider businesses and governments as our clients who wish to get the benefits of improve societal conditions that come with widespread literacy and skills, and are willing to pay for this.  The primary goals and strategies of the Development Alternatives are to innovate technologies and ideas that can be sold by TARA and its subsidiaries to help improve the lives and livelihoods of marginalised people rural communities – women, farmers, craftspersons and others.  This, we continue to do increasingly every year.

For 35 years, we have been growing as an organisation and largely sustaining our operations and growth through a combination of project grants (primarily for R&D and charitable work on the ground with communities), institutional support (primarily for building our innovation capacity), sale of our technologies to local village entrepreneurs and of products to urban consumers, and raising investment capital for our business subsidiaries. For financial stability, a three-pronged approach we aim to undertake i.e. involvement of public private partnership, paid community model and aggressive fund raising through multi-media tools (individual or collective sponsorship). Through public private partnership, we intend to divert public and private funds for Adult literacy Programmes, here we also look forward to leveraging resources like in past we leveraged stationary items for the kits to be used by learners. We have been actively involving local administration, we intend to leverage their support in order to ensure that the last mile delivery for development scheme happens on the ground and poorest of poor reap the benefit. To ensure that this cause of Adult Literacy and Women Empowerment gets the required global and local attention, we intend to use online mediums including Social Media, films etc. to showcase the impact and need for investment in the cause.  We also look forward to bringing a business model where community pays getting educated and the trainer-entrepreneurs from the community itself deliver the required knowledge, for which we are looking for breakthrough ideas that an Elevate Prize could help provide.  

Over the years the program has been funded by a variety of organizations with IKEA Foundation as its biggest supporter granting a total of $ 11,481,742.62 from 2012 till date. The project has also been supported by various government agencies that have leveraged a total of $ 42570.53 in 2011-12 with State Resource Centres (SRC’s) contributing $ 25941.42 and Schedule Castes and Schedule Tribes Welfare contributing $ 16629.11. Through foundation, other than IKEA, the project has received a total of $620931.07 with majority of donation received by 3 foundations, namely HCL foundation that granted $ 168619.20 for a period of 2 years (2017 – 2019), Rural India Supporting Trust (RIST) supporting with $33258.22 and UNICEF granting $ 399098.70 for a period of one year between 2015 and 2016. Noida Power Company Ltd (NPCL) over a period of 4 years between 2012 and 2016 provided $125037.62 as support. Sesame workshop India Trust (SWIT) in 2012-2013 leveraged $ 3059.76 and Basque Centre on Cognition Brain and Language (BCBL) contributed $ 4789.18 for 9 months in 2016. It is through this support of our partners that has helped us scale up and empower over 235,000 women.

It is becoming increasingly clear that this type of program needs donations from philanthropists, corporates and the public.  Governments have too many other priorities to be able to address issues that do not produce immediate tax revenues or votes.  We need to set up a crowd sourcing platform, which the Elevate Prize could provide valuable contribution to, both as an investment in the platform and with expertise from its group of advisors and mentors.

Our current aspirational budget (acknowledging the large uncertainties caused by the COVID-19 Crisis and other climate change related catastrophes our country has seen this year, including two massive hurricanes and a large invasion of locusts) are to raise USD 1 million, which would permit us to maintain our institutional machinery and keep us in the running for much larger initiatives in subsequent years.  On this basis, we would expect to be able to train some 20,000 learners in 3 states and work on setting up an effective crowd-sourcing platform.

For the TA+ program, continuous efforts to replicate and scale up the impact of the its functional literacy model, so that more women and their families can benefit from it, has been a primary goal and a major challenge. The program has been primarily dependent on a single international funding agency for financial support and a need to change this has long been realized within the program to ensure future sustainability of the program.

This prize will help overcome this problem by helping design a plan for scaling up of the program while simultaneously tapering off from its prime funders by drawing in other donors and acting on the need for marketing and media exposure for the program.  We would hire experts to raise public and policymaker awareness on the need to empower women while simultaneously enhancing program visibility and drawing large amounts of followers. These followers would then be urged to become donors and Ambassadors for our crowd sourcing platform.   A fundraising agency will be employed with responsibility to chart out a fundraising strategy and execute it to help tap into CSR funds of multi-lateral and bi-lateral organisations and widen the base of individual donors through a wide variety of fundraising techniques.

It would also allow for partnerships with organisations to build this program into a business model by placing mechanisms that would help build infrastructure where the program can be delivered by the community independently. While charging a minimal amount to the women to ensure sustainability.

The goal is to enhance funding mechanisms to generate adequate funding and grant to reduce dependency on a single international funding agency for financial support. These fundraising partners through their prime solutions would create and implement a strategy and mechanism where the program would be able to tap into a wide array of fund generation mechanisms ranging from government grants to private individuals.

With most organisations focusing more on youth and young adults, there is a need to generate awareness about the benefits of empowering adult women through literacy, the marketing, media partner will not only help generate awareness about these issues but also increase the visibility of the program and increasing brand engagement. 

The program is considering to partner with fundraising solution providers like Syrex or Elevared Effect to fulfil its need to have a robust and efficient fundraising mechanism in place. The partners will assist the program team to generate funds required to scale up in different geographies and reach more women thereby making it possible to achieve the goal to empower 1 million women through literacy by 2023. 

To scale up in different geographies the program requires implementing partners who are Civil society organisation (CSO’s) that are Non-Government Organisation working in the area. Currently, the program is working with three of these CSO partners, namely Sai Jyoti Sanstha, Sarthak and Village Development Society. These organisations provide support for mobilisation of community, bringing the community together, help in establishing centres, conducting graduation ceremonies towards the end of the programme and coordinating the handing over of the Gyan Chaupali to the community and are therefore necessary while scaling up and expanding to other geographies.

In order to ensure sustainability of the program is considering to partner with Taralife Sustainability Solutions Private Limited to convert this program into business model. From being a grant based model providing a no cost education, this partnership will allow to put into place a mechanism that would enable funds from Public Private partnerships to reach the communities to build infrastructure to deliver the model while also charging a minimal amount to ensure sustainability.