Sept 8th is celebrated as International Literacy Day. UNESCO started this tradition in 1965 to highlight the importance of education in the welfare of mankind.According to Global Monitoring Report 2008, about 750+ million lack the minimum literacy skills. Being one of the fastest growing economies in recent times, India still constitutes 35% of world illiterate population and has highest number of illiterates in the world.If this is the case in a huge country like India, it must be worse in the countries with low income. As the estimation from UNESCO says it needs additional $16 billion to improve education standards in 46 low income nations. These figures will be worse because of rise in food prices and unemployment caused due to recession.