Even in the beginning of the 21st Century the most important stumbling block in the way to rapid socio-economic development in the developing countries like India, is undoubtedly the illiteracy in general and the adult-illiteracy in particular. Almost 18 to 20 per cent children are never enrolled, and among those enrolled the proportion of children not reaching the secondary school certificate level is more than 80 per cent. At the higher education level, the situation is no better, either. Not more than 7 per cent of the relevant age-group attend the tertiary level of education. The problem is further aggravated by population explosion witnessed in the latter half of the 20th century. // It is imperative that certain strategies are devised to tackle the problem of such a vast magnitude. It would be necessary that well-conceived but different strategies are devised for educating the babies born in the 21st century, and the illiterate children and adults carried over from the outgoing century. Unfortunately, most of the children needing a special strategy may belong to the under-privileged sections and may have illiterate parents. There is hardly any motivation for these children to pursue education. // Many children born in the last one to two decades of the outgoing century are either nonenrollees or drop-outs. It is futile to expect them to enroll in regular schools. The best strategy to educate them will be to bring them under the fold of Non-formal Education (NFE) or the Open and Distance Learning. However the ODL at school-level needs to be strengthened for providing quality education. // Paper ID 398