KOCHI: As the world celebrates International Literacy Day on Friday, Kerala will launch a unique mission: ‘water literacy’ campaign across the state educating people on the conservation of water, rain water harvesting, revival of water bodies and ways to stop excessive use of water in our daily lives.
The brainchild of the Kerala State Literacy Mission Authority (KSLMA), the programme will be rolled out across 1,200 local self-government institutions viz., 941 village panchayats, 152 block panchayats and 14 district panchayats, besides the municipalities and corporations.
An environmental study report on the status of the water bodies in the state will be released to mark the day while seminars also will be conducted by the Literacy Mission.Officials believe environmental education is the next step for Kerala, which was declared a total literate state in 1991 and became the first in the country to achieve 100 per cent primary education in January, 2016. “Though ‘water literacy’ may not look like a literacy campaign in the narrow technical sense, we believe, in the broader concept, it makes sense to make people literate in environmental aspects,” explained KSLMA Director P S Sreekala. She said 2,200 ‘saksharata preraks’ (young literacy volunteers with high educational qualifications) had been entrusted with the task of conducting classes.
Sreekala said the ‘water literacy’ programme which will have at least 50 students per class, was a part of the KSLMA’s environmental literacy programme, started early this year. The Mission had recently conducted a census-cum-survey of water bodies. “In Kerala, we’re seeing an alarming trend of water bodies dying or getting polluted at a fast pace. It’s the need of the hour to save ourselves from the situation, and this could be done only with the participation of the masses,” said Sreekala.
As part of the environmental literacy programme, the Literacy Mission had conducted a survey to get an update on the water bodies in the state.As per the survey, 55.07 per cent of the respondents felt the drinking water source was polluted, 63.69 per cent said sand mining was prevalent in the state.