Address At The Conference On Moral Values In Education

ENLIGHTENED CITIZENS

I am indeed delighted to participate in this Conference on Moral Values in Education. I congratulate the Anuvrat Samiti and Acharya Sri Mahapragya Pravas Vyavastha Samiti for having organized such an important conference. When I saw the subject "Moral Values in Education", I was asking myself, what will be the components of such a mission? Will it consist of education system to generate enlightened citizens? That means, a combination of learning and value systems. This process can take place for twelve years during a child's education. This covers one third of the population at any point of time in our country. The second important component will be the religions graduating into spiritual movement. Third and most vital component is the poverty eradication by attaining economic prosperity resulting in high employment potential. Now the question we have in front of us is, will it eliminate the international terrorism? Will it eliminate the cross border terrorism? Will it remove the communal clashes? Above all, will it remove the violence in mind and body? Peace of the Individual, thereby peace in the family, peace of the nation and thereby peace of our planet earth will emerge as given in the poetic divine message:

Where there is righteousness in the heart

There is a beauty in the character.

When there is beauty in the character,

there is harmony in the home.

When there is harmony in the home.

There is an order in the nation. When there is order in the nation,

There is peace in the world.

Friends, we can see a beautiful connectivity between heart, character, nation and the world. This is indeed the purpose of human creation, that is divinity.

Standard Human Being

The evolution of human society has followed the path from agricultural society to industrial, information and the present day knowledge society. In agricultural and industrial society, humans and machines dominated the warfare. In the information and knowledge society, intellectual capacity would dominate. Intellectual domination is represented by ideologies, principles and faiths. The suffocation and loss of human rights by the present generation of people due to the backwardness induced economic status or pushed down by caste differentiation or frustrated by denial of timely justice at affordable cost is the right cauldron from which revolution will start giving birth to standard human being. The road map for graduating into a standard human being will have to include :-

a) education with value system,

b) religions graduating into spirituality

c) removal of poverty and economically strong nation

I believe, a standard human being can be created when all these three elements are properly combined.

a. Education with Value System

The best part for a person is his or her learning period in school childhood. The prime learning environment is 5th to 16th years' of age. Of course at home, love and affection are imparted. But again most of the time in a 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 the best of environment and mission oriented learning with value system. During this stage, they need value based education in school and at home for them to become good citizens. This reminds me the echo from Bestolozzy, a great teacher's saying, "give me a child for seven years. Afterwards, let the God or devil take the child. They cannot change the child." For parents and teachers, school campus and home have to have an integrated mission: education with value system. If the child misses the value based education of 25,000 hours in the school campus, no government or society can establish a transparent society or a society with integrity. Up to the age of 17 years, the father, the mother and the teacher lead a child to become an enlightened citizen. If the child misses the period of learning for the reasons as it is today, the nation loses an enlightened citizen.

b. Religion Transforming Into Spirituality: Universal Mind

I would like to recall an incident which happened four decades ago. As you all know, Prof Vikram Sarabhai is the visionary of space programme in the country. He is well known for his cosmic ray research area that led to evolving the space research programme for the nation. Both 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 a number of places. Thumba in Kerala was selected by the scientific community for space research as it was near the equatorial region 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 series of villages and thousands of fishermen folk were living in that area. It also had a beautiful ancient church, St Mary Magdalene Church, Pallithura and a Bishop's House. Prof Vikram Sarabhai met many politicians and bureaucrats to get the place for the work of space science research. It did not move further because the nature of the place. He was asked to see the Bishop of Trivandrum, at that time in 1962, His Excellency Rct Rev Dr Peter Bernard Pereira. It was a Saturday when Prof Vikram Sarabhai met the Bishop. The Bishop smiled and asked him to meet him the next day, ie Sunday. In the 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 truth by reasoning. In one way, science and spiritualism seek the same divine blessings for doing good for the people. My children, can we give the God's abode for a scientific mission?" There was a chorus of 'Amen' from the congregation and the whole church reverberated. Subsequently, the big event took place in 1962. His Excellency Rct Rev Dr Peter Bernard Pereira, the Bishop of Trivandrum, 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. That was the church where we had our design centre, started rocket assembly, design of filament winding machine for FRP product and the Bishop's house was our scientists' place. 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 this event, I can see how enlightened spiritual and scientific leaders, all converge towards giving reverence to the 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 of design, development and produce world class huge rocket system and subsequently, India has the capability of launching geo-synchronous, sun-synchronous and meteorology spacecraft, communication satellite, remote sensing satellite thereby provided fast communication, weather forecasting and also locate water resources for the country. Today, among us, Prof Vikram Sarabhai is not there, Rev Dr Peter Bernard Pereira is not there, but those who are responsible for creation and make the flower and blossom will themselves be a different kind of a flower as described in the Bhagwat Gita: "See the flower, how generously it distributes perfume and honey. It gives to all, gives freely of its love. When its work is done, it falls away quietly. Try to be like the flower, unassuming despite all its qualities". What a beautiful message for all generation of this nation, on integration of minds and universal mind. Above all we see a great scientist and religious leader transforming into a spiritual force and spread to the young: good human beings do live in our country.

c. Removal of Poverty through vision for the nation

People, who are economically or socially in the lower strata, are vulnerable to human rights exploitation by those who are in the higher strata. One way to reduce this exploitation is to narrow this divide. In our country, about 300 million people are below the poverty line. After five decades of progress, the aspirations of people are rightly mounting that India should become a developed country. This is the second vision for the nation. How can we prepare ourselves to this challenge? India has to be economically and commercially powerful with near self-reliance in defence. Our target should be a GDP growth of 9-11% annually and that the people below poverty line to be reduced to nearly zero. This would also include providing of sufficient employment opportunities to the physically and mentally challenged. How are we going to achieve this? Technology Vision 2020 is a pathway to realise this cherished mission.

Five mega projects to transform the nation to a developed country

The Technology Vision 2020 consisted of 17 well linked technology packages in the core sectors. We have identified five areas where India has a core competence for an integrated action: (1) Agriculture and food processing (2) Reliable and quality electric power and surface transport for all parts of the country. (3) Education and Healthcare (4) Information and Communication Technology (5) Strategic sectors.

These five areas are closely inter-related and if well done would lead to national, food, economic and security. A strong partnership among the R&D, academy, industry and the community as a whole with the Government departments will be essential to accomplish the vision for a developed India.

Concluding Remarks

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 citizens with value system. I once again thank the organizers for organizing this important conference on "Moral Values in Education". May the Almighty bless you. 

Thank you.