India's literacy rate is at 74.04%.Kerala is the most literate state in India, with 93.91% literacy. Bihar is the least literate state in India, with a literacy of 63.82%. Several other social indicators of the two states are correlated with these rates, such as life expectancy at birth (71.61 for males and 75 for females in Kerala, 65.66 for males and 64.79 for females in Bihar), infant mortality per 1,000 live births (10 in Kerala, 61 in Bihar), birth rate per 1,000 people (16.9 in Kerala, 30.9 in Bihar) and death rate per 1,000 people (6.4 in Kerala, 7.9 in Bihar).
Every census since 1881 had indicated rising literacy in the country, but the population growth rate had been high enough that the absolute number of illiterates rose with every decade. The 2001-2011 decade is the second census period (after the 1991-2001 census period) when the absolute number of Indian illiterates declined (by 31,196,847 people), indicting that the literacy growth rate is now outstripping the population growth rate.
Bihar is the only remain Indian state in the 2011 census where less than 65% of the population was literate. It is also only one of two states where less than 75% of the male population (the other being Arunachal Pradesh) was literate and only one of two states where less than 55% of the female population (the other being Rajasthan) was literate. Six Indian states account for about 70% of all illiterates in India: Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal. Slightly less than half of all Indian illiterates (48.12%) are in the six Hindi-speaking states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.
Large variations in literacy exist even between contiguous states. While there are few states at the top and bottom, most states are just above or below the national average.