Mushtaq Ahmed Azmi

Mushtaq Ahmed Azmi (1 June 1919 – 12 July 2011), was a mass literacy expert. He was one of the first non-officials to be associated with the development of Adult Education program in India from the early 1950s, and was an early leader of the mass literacy movement. As an officer of UNESCO, he was posted in Africa and seconded to lead mass literacy programs in Nigeria and Zambia. He was offered a position in the UNESCO by the British diplomat and head of fundamental education at UNESCO John Bowers.

During his sixty-year career, he conducted a number of studies and wrote books and technical documents, which are used by experts and activists in the field of adult education.

He developed control, monitoring and evaluation systems for national literacy programs such as Total Literacy Campaigns (TLC) and Post Literacy Programs (PLP), and was an advocate of lifelong learning.

Early life and education Mushtaq Ahmed Azmi was born in the village of Rajapur Sikror, Saraimeer Azamgarh district, Uttar Pradesh. Thus, the suffix Azmi. He later dropped the suffix citing his leaving the place at the age of seven. His early education was in Burma under his paternal uncle. After the separation of Burma from India in 1935, he returned to India and enrolled at Jubilee College in Lucknow, UP.

He graduated first class with a Bachelor of Arts in history from Aligarh Muslim University in 1942 at the age of 23. Ahmed embarked on the UNESCO Fellowship study program traveling to Jamaica (three and a half months), Haiti (two weeks), Puerto Rico (two weeks), and Nairobi (one and a half months). Throughout the program, he received further training in production programmes, techniques of writing text-books and follow-up reading materials, research and educational control necessary to produce well-graded materials according to the interest and level of comprehension of adult readers, techniques of distribution, illustration, printing, the relationship between production programmes, literacy campaigns and community development. He also trained in organizing, financing, staffing and equipping a vernacular literature bureau as well as learning of its production activities' connection to the education system and the mass education programme.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Welthy Honsinger Fisher had founded Literacy House in Lucknow, UP, in 1956 at the behest of Mahatma Gandhi. It secured funding from World Education, NY , in 1958

Over the next one decade, from 1965 till 1978, Ahmed served as a UNESCO Adviser on adult literacy to the governments of Nigeria, Zambia, among others.

Upon his return to India in 1978, he held the office of Director, Center for Development of Women and Youth in Aligarh, UP. He shifted base to New Delhi in 1982, where he worked as the Director of the State Resource Center within Jamia Millia Islamia. In 1990, he resumed his position as the Director of Literacy House in Lucknow, UP and stayed there till 1993.

He was appointed as the Chairman of the National Institute of Adult Education (NIAE) in 1995, Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD), Government of India, in New Delhi Simultanesouly, he also served as the Chairman of National Core Group, External Evaluation of Total Literacy Campaign (TLC)/Post-Literacy Programmes (PLP), an initiative of the Ministry of HRD, Government of India, New Delhi

An Evaluation of Reading Materials for Neoliterates and a Study of their Reading Needs and Interests, Research, Training and Production Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi 1958 A Survey of Reading Materials for Neoliterates, Research, Training and Production Center, JMI and Indian Adult Education Association, Govt. of India, New Delhi, 1957 A Study of Post-Literacy Programmes (PLP), 1957 What Literacy Does to People, Ministry of Education, New Delhi, Govt. of India, 1965 How to Write Primers for Adults, Directorate of Adult Education, New Delhi, Govt. of India,1979 How to Write Primers for Adults, Directorate of Adult education, New Delhi, Govt. of India, 1982 A Study of the Relationship between the Period of Learning and the Extent of Retention of Literacy, Indian Adult Education Association (IAEA), New Delhi, Govt. of India, 1985 A Study of Post-Literacy Programmes (PLP),1985 A study on Total Literacy Campaigns, 1994 Survey of Knowledge, Opinion, and Attitude of Literate/Non-literate Adult Regarding ICPD Paradigm Shift, Directorate of Adult education, Govt. of India, 1998 Mirror of Total Literacy Campaign (TLC) - An Evaluation of 71 External Evaluation Reports up to 1999, 2000 Story of Adult Education, Jamia Millia Islamia, SRC Jamia, 2001 Participation of Muslims, particularly Muslim women in Total Literacy Campaign, SRC, Jamia 2001

Awards Mushtaq Ahmed received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984 for his yeoman services to the field of adult education by the Indian Adult Education Association (IAEA).

In 1997, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, conferred upon him a National Award for Literacy, in recognition of his outstanding lifetime services to the cause of promoting mass literacy in India.