Address At The Maulana Azad National Urdu University

University education and the vision for developed India

I am indeed delighted to be at the Maulana Azad National Urdu University. I am happy to note that this university is offering academic program in Urdu since 1998-99 with 68 steady centers spread over 16 states in our country with over twenty thousand students enrollment. Urdu is an Important language having Indian origin and it has several finest literature works. I would like to recall that ? Sare Jahan Se Achcha? ? one of the important national integration song is from Urdu. I am also happy to note that this university is having distant mode education in language and social sciences. I was thinking what I can share with the gathering here. I have a few thoughts on knowledge technology and e-learning.

1. Knowledge Technology and E-Learning

1. Since this university has a number of regional centres, it is essential to use Information Technology extensively and provide interactive tele-education. Information and communication technology has to be used to connect the faculty, who will be teaching from this university, to multiple class rooms in various states. Probably fiber optic leased line cables or combination of Satellite line ( V-SAT ) can be used.

2. The Urdu University definitely need a good database, so that the traditional knowledge that has been given to us by our forefathers is propagated irrespective of caste, creed and colour. If we do not propagate now, the knowledge will soon disappear. How do we preserve this knowledge?

3. Today, technology is advanced to such an extent that we could even think of storing all the human knowledge in digital form. One initiative in this direction is of having a Universal Digital Library, irrespective of languages.

4. Data-base that the University creates for the Urdu document can also be used to train computers to translate Urdu to English and vice versa. This will make it possible for those using the Urdu data-base, also to acquire additional knowledge from the vast knowledge base available in the World Wide Web in English and other languages.

5. I would like to suggest that the board members of this university should aim to provide educational learning program in unique areas. Vocational programs in the areas of engineering, programming, nursing may be offered to a large number of educated un-employed youth to make them employable.

6. Digital Library is coming in a big way. In India there is a program to digitize 250 million pages, say about one million books in two years? time. Urdu university should become a partner to this program. Modern technologies and machineries are available with us to carry-out this digitizing. Professor N. Balakrishnan of IISc, Bangalore is the co-ordinator for this program and he will be available for you.

7. I would like to emphasize that women education has to be given highest priority. When the women are empowered, society with stability will get assured. We have to ensure the continuity of secondary education and university education for girls. It is essential to establish connectivity between the university and secondary schools. Distant education packages has to be evolved to cater towards women education. Periodically, secondary level students should be counseled to continue their education both in diploma level and degree level.

8. A Research team should be started in this university for creating teaching resources for both PG and Ph.D level programs in Urdu particularly for professional courses. This will be highly beneficial to the the people with Urdu as mother tongue. At the same time, we have to realize and gear up to get educated in one or more national language as a back-up.

II. a Vision for the nation

We got freedom in 1947, that was the result of first vision for the nation. This vision created best of leaders in many fields like politics, philosophy, science & technology and industry. Since independence, we have witnessed, increase in life expectancy, improvement in literacy rate, self sufficiency in food production, self reliance in certain strategic areas, growth of small and large-scale industries. Now more than fifty years have gone by and we are called as one of the hundreds of developing countries, in a distinct way a separation from G-8 countries. We have many challenges. Nearly 260 million people who are below the poverty line have to join the mainstream of a good life. 100% literacy, health for all, multiple industrial and agricultural productivity and life style with value system has to emerge. Hence we need the second vision for the nation to become developed.

II. b. Integrated action for developed India

We have identified five areas where India has a core competence for an integrated action: (1) Agriculture and food processing - we have to put a target of 360 million tons of food and agricultural production. Other areas of agriculture and agro food processing would bring prosperity to rural people and speed up the economic growth. (2) Reliable and quality electric power for all parts of the country. (3) Education and Healthcare - we have seen, based on the experience, education and healthcare are inter related and assist population control leads to social security and also national security. (4) Information Technology - This is one of our core competence. We believe, this area can be used to promote education in remote areas and also to create national wealth. (5) Strategic sectors - This area, fortunately, witnessed the growth in nuclear technology, space technology and defence technology.

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

Concluding Remarks

Human resources, particularly with large young population, are unique core strength of the nation. This resource can be transformed through various educational and training programmes. Skilled, unskilled and creative manpower can be transformed into wealth generators particularly in the service sectors, agro industries etc. Knowledge-intensive industries can be generated out of our existing industries by injecting demand for high-level software/hardware, which would bring tremendous value addition. It is said, "the precious asset for a company or a country is the skill, ingenuity and imagination of its people. With globalisation, this will become more important because everybody will have access to world class technology and the key distinguishing feature will be the ability of people in different countries to use their imagination to make the best use of the technology". Indeed, development and innovative use of multiple technologies with transparent management structure coupled with IT, will give thrust to our vision of becoming a developed India by 2020.

My best wishes.