NIPUN (National Initiative for Proficiency in Reading with Understanding and Numeracy) BHARAT -2021 mission launched by School Education & Literacy Department, MoE, Govt. of India is working under mission mode in every state of India to ensure the achievement of Universal Foundational Literacy and Numeracy in school education by 2026-27. This paper discusses how the Early Child Care Education is very important for the development and improvement of foundational language and literacy. This paper focuses on the critical analysis of data of nation-wide enrolment of children in primary education and nation-wide performance of the students in foundational language literacy and numeracy. It also throws light on the concept and components of foundational language and literacy which mainly include reading and writing with special focus on reading with understanding. Reading with understanding is largely discussed in this paper. Only reading the letters or word is not reading, reading along with an ability to comprehend the meaning of the written work is in fact what reading is and should be taken as skill. This paper also discuss how foundational language and literacy is important at the early stage of learning to remove the drop out in secondary and higher secondary education. Various strategies for improving foundational language literacy and numeracy like curriculum revamping, pedagogical innovations, restructuring teacher education programs, revisiting assessment, administrative support and learning resources for the same have been also discussed in this paper.