India's President Abdul Kalam Saturday urged a major hike in government and private-sector spending on education to boost employment and literacy in a country where some 350 million people cannot read.
In his customary speech on the eve of Independence Day, Kalam said India needed to focus on providing "high-value and productive employment opportunities."
"A recent study indicates that the unemployment level in the country is nine percent of 400 million employable people. That is around 36 million," said Kalam, whose role is largely ceremonial.
"Yet we have 350 million people who need literacy and many more who have to acquire employable skills to suit the emerging modern India and the globe," the president said.
Despite successive governments promising to achieve universal education and steadily increasing funding, "Thirty five percent of our adult population is yet to achieve literacy," Kalam said.
Thirty-nine percent of primary school students drop out and 55 percent of children in middle school leave before finishing, he said.
Kalam, who rose from a modest upbringing to become India's foremost missile scientist, said education funding was little more than four percent of gross domestic product.
"If we have to achieve nearly 100 percent literacy, it is necessary to increase expenditure on education to about six to seven percent of GDP," he said.
He appealed to the private sector to pitch in, saying the burden of higher education spending would only be felt for a few years.
"Different regions of the country may be adopted by the corporate sector within an overall national mission for education," he said.
India has set itself the goal of transforming itself into a developed nation by 2020.