Are we equal?

The world is now home to 781 million illiterate adults - with 68% of illiterate adults in India being women. India has failed to reduce its adult illiteracy rate by 50% as planned and since 2000 only managed reducing it by 26%, according to a new UNESCO global education report to be launched on April 9.

Even though there is good news with India expected to become the only country in South and West Asia in 2015 to have an equal ratio of girls to boys in both primary and secondary education, the bad news is that early marriage and adolescent pregnancies are keeping girls out of school in India. In 41 countries, 30% women aged 20 to 24 were married by the age of 18. As many as 36.4 million women in developing countries aged 20 to 24 reported having given birth before age 18 and 2 million before age 15.