PATNA, INDIA - An east Indian state is offering one rupee per day to poor children to encourage them to attend school and raise literacy levels, officials said on Wednesday.

At least 40 percent of India's population lives on under US$1.25 a day and in the eastern state of Bihar at least one million children do not receive any form of education, government records show.

'The amount may be little, but this will bring them back to school,' Bihar's Tribal Welfare Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi said on Wednesday.

Children said they were happy to pocket the cash.

'I am not missing my classes these days or else I will have less coins in my pocket,' Sonu Manjhi, a six-year-old student said at a school in Patna, capital of the eastern state.