Let me join all of you in welcoming Shri G. Madhavan Nair who has taken the trouble to be with us this morning on this important day of 9th Convocation of the Sikkim Manipal University. Thank you. It is my pleasure to welcome each one of you present here.
The Convocation is a landmark in the life of every student for this puts one on a platform from where he or she moves into a new life of activity and responsibility and, if I may say so, fulfillment.
I would like to share with you on this occasion some general thoughts.
Fortunately, education is in the news in India. The enactment of the Right to Education is truly historic in our history. For centuries people of certain castes and women in general were denied access to education. Our leaders during the freedom struggle rejected this deplorable tradition and we have made a decisive break with this past. We are keen to secure education for each Indian.
Education is at the centre of both individual development and overall progress in society. From ancient gurukul ashrams in India and Egypt’s Book of Instruction to modern day institutes of technology, medicine, and management, civilizations have contributed to prosperity and social harmony by educating their youth.
A good education empowers people to take responsibility for their own lives and for improving the lives of those around them. Modern technology and the forces of globalization have reduced distances and increased connectivity. The content and quality of education have enormous potential to make an important contribution to our individual well-being and to strengthening of our nation.
Education is seen as an experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual. It is the process by which society transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills and values to its new generation. Education should also be seen as a way of producing good citizens for the society with knowledge, skills and moral values.
India has one of the largest higher education systems in the world and is emerging as a source of technical manpower for the whole world. India is also emerging as an economic superpower. On the one hand, we have IIMs and IITs that rank among the best institutes in the world. On the other hand, there are very large number of colleges/universities in the country that do not even have the basic infrastructure including class-rooms and teachers.
It is being increasingly recognized that knowledge would be the key driving force in the 21st century and that India has the potential to emerge as a globally competitive player. Towards this, India needs a knowledge revolution to build capacity and generate quality to empower its human capital including our 550 million nationals who are below the age of 25.
Our unique demographic dividend offers a tremendous opportunity as well as a daunting challenge.
We have 130 million children in the age group of 18-24 years. Only 11 million (less than 10%) of these are going to college at present. We have 460 universities and 20,000 colleges, including around 3000 professional colleges at present.
The Knowledge Commission has recommended that India needs 1500 universities and consequently 50,000 colleges by 2015. We have about five lakh college teachers in the country today. This number has to go up to 15 lakh by the year 2015. This is a serious shortfall, but at the same time the graduating students should see it as an opportunity to join the teaching profession which is going to provide opportunities for a very high growth career.
Challenges of higher education include lack of autonomy of universities, flawed regulatory mechanism, regional imbalance, need for better quality teachers, lack of good infrastructure, non-uniform curriculum across the universities, different evaluation systems in different universities and difficulties faced by students while moving from one university to another.
The Government and educationists in the country are alive to these problems and are working on solutions to these. The formation of a National Commission for Higher Education and Research as an Apex Regulatory Body to advise the Government on higher education and to serve as a think tank is under consideration. This would provide a vision of higher education and create norms and processes for accreditation of universities with a view to decentralize powers and gradually free the Universities of the present over-regulated system.
There is lot of hope in respect of education reforms in the country. We have to move with caution and deliberation but also with speed and determination. Our democratic processes should help us in achieving our goal.
Today, we are also facing a bigger human challenge: How to live?
In an age where even the educated youth are joining suicide squads and indulging in senseless violence, the moot question is whether the education system can be made sensitive to this challenge.
The very civilization of which science, the Internet, and related sources of knowledge are the integral parts is now under threat from fundamentalism and the ignorance that underlines it. It has fuelled helplessness, hopelessness, and a distortion of religious beliefs. Many believe that we have to look beyond science and technology to the learning of religions, history, literature, and the arts.
Democracy depends on the ability to manage conflict constructively. Learning how to deal with conflict in a civil manner is one of the great lessons that schools must teach. In a long span of school and university education of nearly two decades students who have been exposed to tackling controversial issues in a civil manner would perform better in leadership roles than those who have no such experience.
The task of utilizing education as an instrument of harmony is not an easy affair. The educational curriculum, in particular has become in several countries an ideological battleground. The interpretation of historical events often excites religious and ethnic groups who start taking positions that are not always rational. Yet, education is the most dependable resource for preparing the youth for initiating dialogue. Patience and time are needed for education to play its expected meaningful role in bringing peace and harmony in the world. The biggest positive factor is that despite all odds youth all over the world are full of hope.
The primary goal should be to produce students who are aware of their ignorance both in terms of their own culture as well as of others. The need, therefore, is to move towards enriching the minds of students about various cultures and practices. The educational system must respect the life of the mind, its freedom, and its diversity.
Action is needed in several areas. One, devising a curriculum that encourages respect for diversity and multiculturalism; two, addressing problems of shortages of good teachers; three, providing infrastructure for schools; and four, opportunities for lifelong learning.
Diversity of cultures and religions are to be viewed as assets. Our education system can make an enduring contribution to the building of tolerance and mutual respect that can help turn diversity from being a problem to becoming an asset for harmonious living.
Two aspects of education would, however, remain paramount. First, education must strive to create in young minds a willingness to tolerate differences of opinion and the desire to understand different points of view. Second, the massive progress in science and technology has tended to stress the intellectual rather than moral and spiritual values.
What we need is a synthesis of these values –spiritual and moral as well as intellectual with the aim of producing a fully integrated human being. Such a person would be both inward looking as well as outward looking, who searches his own mind in order that his nobler self may prevail at all times, and at the same time recognize his obligations to his fellow men and the world around him.
Your University is also an example of autonomy and the need is not only to preserve it but also to strengthen it for realizing the dream of world class institutions in this region. Your University would be long remembered in Sikkim as it is not only a success story of public-private partnership but it also brought in modern centres of learning in technology and medicine to Sikkim for the first time.
For a university to do well, its alumni have to do well. The Sikkim Manipal University will be looking forward to you, dear graduates to do well in life and make us, your teachers and parents proud.
I congratulate the graduating students and their proud parents. I wish the young graduates all the best in their future endeavours.
May you be bestowed with all the inclinations and energy to build a strong, prosperous, inclusive and peaceful India.
Thank you.
Jai hind.
