Address At The Annual Lecture Of The Saurashtra Univeristy At Rajkot, Gujarat

Evolution of Enlightened Citizen

"Thinking provides knowledge, 
Knowledge makes you great"

I am delighted to deliver the inaugural lecture of the Saurashtra University. My greetings to the Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, Faculty, students and staff and all the distinguished guests. When I address this audience I realise, you represent over One lakh thirty thousand youth studying in various colleges and institutions of this university. For my address today, I have selected the topic "Evolution of enlightened citizen".

Dream of Youth

I have so far interacted with over one million students below the age of 17 during my various visits. Every day at Rashtrapati Bhavan at least one group of children from some part of the country visits and interact with me. I could see a dream in all the faces of these children. Our children want to live in a beautiful, happy, economically developed and safe India. A happy India is possible only through the integration of economic development coupled with civilisational heritage. How to evolve an enlightened citizen? Enlightened citizen is built up of three components.

Component of Enlightened citizens

The evolution of enlightened human beings is indeed a big challenge for the world community. I was asking myself, what will be the components of such a mission? The first component is education with value system, second is religion graduating into spiritual force to bring universal brotherhood and the third is economic prosperity leading to lifting up of the people from below the poverty line.

I. Education with value system

Mission of the Teacher: School is the next important environment where the character is getting shaped. The prime learning period for the children is five to seventeen years of age. The student spends approximately 25,000 hours in the school campus. Of course, at home, love and affection are imparted but again most of the time of the day is spent in preparing school?s homework and study, eat, play and sleep. Hence the school hours for children are the best time for learning and need best of environment, mission oriented learning with value system. I still hear the echo from Bestolozzy, a Greek teacher?s saying, ?give me a child for seven years. Afterwards, let the God or devil take the child. They cannot change the child.? That is the great confidence of the teacher. What a golden mission for the teachers of great character and value system in our schools in the country!

Elevating the young minds: While I was in college, I remember the lectures given by highest authority of the Jesuit institution Rev Father Rector Kalathil of St. Joshep?s college, Trichirappalli, Tamilnadu. Every week on Monday, he will take class for an hour. He used to talk about good human beings, present and past, and what makes a good human being. In this class he used to give lectures on personalities such as Buddha, Confucius, St. Augustine, Califa Omar, Mahatma Gandhi, Einstein, Abraham Lincoln including some scientific personalities and moral stories linked to our civilizational heritage. He also used to talk about great personalities living in the father?s lodge and who had made contribution with values in the service of the people. It is essential in the secondary schools and colleges to arrange a lecture by a great teacher of the institution once in a week for one hour on India?s civilizational heritage. This class can be called as a Moral Science Class. That will elevate the young minds to love the country, to love the other human beings and elevate the young to higher planes.

II Religion transforming into spirituality

My visit to many religious places, cultural complexes and houses of worship throughout the length and breadth of this great country and meeting many religious leaders gives me the following message. The religions are like exquisite gardens, places full of surpassing beauty and tranquility, like sacred groves filled with beautiful birds and their melodious songs. I truly think that religions are beautiful gardens. They are enchanting islands, veritable oasis for the soul and the spirit. But they are islands nevertheless. How can we connect them so that the fragrance engulfs the whole universe? If we can connect all the islands with love and compassion, in a 'garland', we will have a prosperous India and prosperous world. I would like to illustrate with my experience in Thumba.

Church Experience: In 1962, Dr Homi Bhabha and Prof Vikram Sarabhai were looking for a site to establish space research station in the equatorial region. These two great scientists visited number of places. The scientific community for space research selected Thumba in Kerala as it was near the magnetic equator within the flow of electrojet and was ideally suited for ionospheric research in upper atmosphere, apart from study of atmospheric structure. When Prof Vikram Sarabhai visited Thumba, the locality had many villages and thousands of fishing communities were living in that area. It also had an ancient St Mary Magdalene Church at Pallithura and a Bishop's House. Prof Vikram Sarabhai met many politicians and bureaucrats to get the place to set up an establishment for space science research work. He could not succeed because of the nature of the place. He was asked to see the Bishop of Thiruvananthapuram. At that time, Rev Father Peter Bernard Pereira was the Bishop. It was a Saturday when Prof Vikram Sarabhai met the Bishop. The Bishop smiled and asked him to meet him the next day. In the Sunday morning Service, the Bishop told the congregation, "My children, I have a famous scientist with me who wants our church and the place I live for the work of space science research. Dear children, science seeks the truth that enriches human life. The higher level of religion is spirituality. The spiritual preachers like me, seek the help of the Almighty to bring peace to human minds. In short, what Vikram is doing and what I am doing are the same - both science and spirituality seek the Almighty?s blessings for human prosperity in mind and body. Vikram Sarabhai promises within six months, our abode and church will be newly built and given to us. Children, can we give them God?s abode, my abode and your abode for a scientific mission?? There was a pin-drop silence for a while followed by a hearty ?Amen? from the congregation, which made the whole church reverberate.

Subsequently, the big event took place in 1962. Rev Father Peter Bernard Pereira, the Bishop of Thiruvananthapuram, took the noble decision to dedicate the church in recognition of the national goal for the establishment of the Indian Space Research Organisation at Pallithura, Thumba. We made that church as our design centre, started rocket assembly; design of filament winding machine for FRP product and the Bishop's house was our design centre. Later, the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) led to the establishment of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) and multiple space centres throughout the country.

When I think of that event, I can see how enlightened spiritual and scientific leaders; all converge towards giving reverence to the meaning of human life. New church and new schools were established in record time. Of course the birth of TERLS and then VSSC gave the country the capability to design, develop and produce huge world class rocket system and subsequently, India built the capability of launching geo-synchronous, sun-synchronous and meteorology spacecraft, communication satellite, remote sensing satellite thereby provided fast communication, weather forecasting and also the ability to locate water resources for the country. Today, neither Prof Vikram Sarabhai nor Rev Father Peter Bernard Pereira are with us but the fragrance of their nobility with unity of minds is still with us and will continue for generations.

III Economic prosperity: A national vision

Our nation is going through a major challenge of uplifting of 260 million people who are below the poverty line. They need habitat, they need food, they need health care, and they need education and employment and finally resulting into a good life. Our GDP is growing at more than 8% per annum. Whereas, the economists suggest that to uplift the people below poverty line, our economy has to grow at the rate of 10% per annum consistently, for over a decade.

Integrated action

To meet the need of one billion people, we have the mission of transforming India into a developed nation. We have identified five areas where India has core competence for integrated action: (1) Agriculture and food processing (2) Education and Healthcare (3) Information and Communication Technology (4) Reliable and Quality Electric power, Surface transport and Infrastructure for all parts of the country. (5) Self-reliance in critical technologies. These five areas are closely inter-related and if well done would lead to national, food and economic security. One of the major components of national development in which the educational institutions can contribute is in the creation of PURAs (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas). Here I would like to mention the mission I gave in the 93rd Indian Science Congress.

Technology for societal transformation

The transformation of India will need transformation of six hundred thousand villages. This would need creation of seven thousand PURAs spread in different parts of the country with physical connectivity, electronic connectivity, knowledge connectivity leading to economic connectivity. I suggested that the decision could be taken to allot Rs. 500 crore to develop 100 PURA Clusters. Each cluster, comprising of 20 to 30 villages, will have an educational institution as a nucleus. The development will comprise of setting up of village knowledge centres; agro-clinics; Tele-education and Tele-medicine centres; and other employment oriented schemes such as bio-gas plants; water treatment plants (brackish to potable water); bio-fuel esterification plant; cold storage; consumer product development; vocational training centres and setting up of business centres by the entrepreneurs for national and international marketing of the products from these rural enterprises. In all these cases, the educational institutions should plan the activities in consultation with local people who are the beneficiaries of this programme.

A Performance Challenge

These hundred PURA programmes originating from educational institutions and with public-private partnership will provide the experience for taking up big programmes in future in an industrial scale. This undertaking will build the capacities of the villagers and encourage the Indian entrepreneurs to become an active partner in this development process. These activities should not be treated as mere experiments and scientific knowledge; it is the application of science and technology to societal transformation. The winners are the academic institutions and the rural people belonging to the PURA Clusters. Finally, there should be a clear assessment whether the villagers have been benefited. A joint team of the village members and the scientists/technologists can do this. This will lead to the birth of the Civic Scientists. This is the performance challenge, which I would like to pose to the experienced scientific community and to the Government officials. This mission I gave since I had seen three operational PURA projects: Periyar PURA in Tamil Nadu Loni PURA in Maharashtra and the Chitrakoot PURA in Madhya Pradesh. Later I saw Byrraju PURA in Andhra Pradesh. The first three PURAs have been pioneered by educational institutions and the fourth one is pioneered by an IT industry assisted Foundation. The Ministry of Rural Development is the nodal ministry for funding. The Saurashtra University can select the rural cluster comprising of 20-30 villages and create PURA complex providing physical connectivity, electronic connectivity, knowledge connectivity leading to economic connectivity of the cluster.

EDUSAT that has the potential to connect 150,000 terminals for interactive tele-education. Saurashtra University with 224 affiliated colleges can seek the help of ISRO to establish the tele-education connectivity for imparting quality education for all the affiliated colleges. The tele-education software can be provided by Rashtrapati Bhavan. Content generation is essential component and University should embark on a mission mode operation to design and develop the content for delivering quality education across all constituent college of the University. The mission of university is to empower the students through capacity building.

Empowerment and leadership

When the child is empowered by the parents, at various phases of growth, the child gets transformed into a responsible citizen. When the teacher is empowered with knowledge and experience, good young human beings with value systems take shape. When individual or a team is empowered with technology, transformation to higher potential for achievement is assured. When the leader of any institution empowers his or her people, leaders are born who can change the nation in multiple areas. When women are empowered, society with stability gets assured. When the political leaders of the nation empower the people through visionary policies, the prosperity of the nation is certain. When religion transforms into a spiritual force the people become enlightened citizen with value system.

The University education should empower the students to become enlightened citizens and become partners in the national development leading to an economic prosperous, happy and safe India.

Conclusion

In Conclusion, I would like to give a theme for the aspiring youth participating in national development missions. For success in any mission, you have to prepare yourself with knowledge, and be prepared to face the challenges coming in your way with courage. Dear friends, will you take a oath with me on Courage.

COURAGE

Courage to think different,

Courage to invent,

Courage to discover the impossible,

Courage to combat the problems and Succeed are the

unique qualities of the youth.

As a youth of my nation, I will work and work with

courage to achieve success in all our missions.

With the foundation of enlightened citizenship empowered with courage, India can certainly emerge as an economically developed nation well before 2020, with its civilizational heritage and value systems spreading harmony and peace to the world. My best wishes to all the members of the Saurashtra University for success in their mission of creating enlightened citizens through value based education.

May God Bless You.