Hyderabad: The two Telugu-speaking states travel in the same boat if the figures of the annual education report are any indication. Teenagers in Nizamabad district in Telangana and Srikakulam district in Andhra Pradesh are found to lack basic skills.
Only 22 per cent of them could solve the subtraction task in Srikakulam while in Nizamabad the number was 32 per cent. It is difficult to believe that a majority of teenagers from these two districts never had access to a computer or the Internet. In Srikakulam, 63 per cent teenagers never had access to a computer and 64 per cent don’t know about it.
In Nizamabad, it was found that 68 per cent lacked computer knowledge and 59 per cent didn’t know how to use it. Prof. Haragopal, general secretary of SAVE Education, Telangana, said that it is no wonder that computer literacy is low in rural areas.
“How many schools in rural areas have computers, continuous power supply, trained staff and programmes in Telugu language? A famous high school in Mogiligidda in erstwhile Mahabubnagar district has 1,000 students. But it does not have a computer lab. So one can understand the situation,” he said.
Also, 41 per cent of teenagers in rural villages of Srikakulam are found to have worked for 15 days or more while in Nizamabad it was 28 per cent.
Nearly 70 per cent of teenagers in both the states have bank accounts, but a majority of them don’t know how to use ATM facility and e-banking.
Interestingly, Ernakulam district in Kerala was way ahead of the pack among the southern states. The survey was also done in Madurai (Tamil Nadu) and Mysuru (Karnataka).
Around 99 per cent of teenagers were computer literate and 90 per cent had a good idea about internet use in Kerala. More than 99 per cent of them used mobiles, while in the Telugu states it ranged from 80 to 88 per cent. Also 95 per cent of students were able to read English confidently.
