Literacy and adult education have always been held up at conceptual and policy levels with very lofty ideals in national development and in creation of an equitable society. Several developing countries, including India, had experimented and are still experimenting with different approaches and models of providing literary, some successfully and some not so successfully. However, literacy and adult education have not been on the priority list of social science research community, or on the priority policy agenda of the governments in many developing countries. As a result, a scholarly critique of the concepts, theories, and the programmes relating to literacy and adult education, has been scanty and scattered.