Address at the National Digital Film Festival for Children, New Delhi

Children friendly Digital world

"Knowledge makes you great"

I am delighted to participate in the Golden Jubilee Film festival organized by Children's Film Society of India. My greetings to the organizers, creative artists, film producers, technicians, editors and children. Fifty years is an important landmark for this institution in promoting the children's education in the country. The introduction of the children's digital film festival is an important step and will definitely enable creation of low cost, high quality visual films for enhancing the learning of the children. It is essential that the content of digital film should be able to create enthusiasm in the mind and the body and above all lead to creativity. I congratulate you for promoting such innovative addition to your existing tasks. I would like to discuss how digital technology enhances the learning curve of the children.

Children friendly Digital world

The digital format has brought in a new visual language to the world of moving images. Due to its accessibility, it has encouraged a great deal of experimentation and many new forms of storytelling have emerged. Artists and filmmakers have all used this format to an end that is not always commercially driven and have therefore created works that are fresh and new in their approach. It is no wonder then that digital films and videos have become the starting points of new trends in filmmaking. Digital film systems have much higher resolution than digital video systems, both in the spatial dimension (number of pixels) and the tonal dimension (representation of brightness). They also tend to have much finer control over colorimetry throughout the production process. These digital technologies have attracted the children in many forms. Worldwide, digital technologies are friendlier to children and they feel at home when they play with digital environment than the grown ups. Onedotzero provides great examples in that direction. Here let me narrate my experience in the digital world.

Borderless world

On 31 May 2006, from multi-media studio of Rashtrapati Bhavan, I addressed the US-India summit on Education, Research and Technology organized by University of California, Santiago and Callit2 in partnership with India's Department of Science and Technology. It is a unique Multimedia Tele-Conference between India and USA through a high bandwidth network. The High Definition systems (HDTV) has been used at both ends and using the Virtual tele-education platform from Rashtrapati Bhavan Multimedia Studio. An integrated action by a number of public and private organizations both from India and USA worked together to establish the hassle free high bandwidth connectivity between Rashtrapati Bhavan and UCSD. Through this high bandwidth connectivity, the US audience felt my virtual presence in their hall through a High Definition (HD) projection system in big screen for the whole duration of my lecture and interactive question answer session for around 90 minutes. I felt that the audience was really with me, even though it is virtual and 12,000 km away. During the lecture, I could refer my website, digital library, whiteboard along with my power point presentation on line. This experience made me realize the power of digital technology as an integrator of minds leading to a borderless world without geographical barriers - a symbol of universalisation. This power of digital technologies can be effectively used for providing creative learning and quality education to students located in different parts of the State. Using this advantage, we should find a mechanism to attract the children creatively so that we can inculcate education with value system in children's minds. That will have everlasting impact in promoting an enlightened society. In this context, I would like to bring it to you dear children, some of the real life stories which can be transformed into children's digital films.

Inculcate value system using digital technology

Let me now tell you, dear children, the advise Gandhiji's mother gave her son.

"Son, in your entire life time if you can save or better

someone's life, your birth as a human being and your

life is a success. You have the blessing of the Almighty

God".

This advice has made a deep impact in the mind of Gandhiji, which made him to work for the humanity throughout his life. A digital episode of this beautiful event can be created.

Mother gives principle of truth

Now, I will narrate to you a story surrounding the life of a great saint Sheikh Abdul Qadir Al-Gelani which happened about one thousand years ago. At the age of 8, Abdul Qadir left his native place in Iraq to become a great Darvesh (saint).

One day child Abdul Qadir heard a cow saying that what you are doing here in the grazing fields, it is not for this that you have been created. He promptly ran back to his house feeling utterly terrified and climbed on to the roof of his house. From there he saw a large group of people returning from Arafat Mountain, thousands of miles away from his place in the neighbourhood of Mecca after performing Haj. Bewildered Abdul Qadir went to his mother and asked her permission to make a journey to Baghdad and pursue a career in knowledge. Mother heard the divine call and promptly gave the permission for him to go. But, she gave him 40 gold coins which was his share he inherited from his father. She stitched these 40 gold coins inside the lining of his coat and gave him permission to leave. When she stepped out of the door to bid him a farewell, she said, "Oh, my son! You are going! I have detached myself from you for the sake of Allah knowing that I shall not see your face again until the day of last judgement. But take one advice from mother, "My son, you always feel the truth, speak the truth and propagate the truth even when your life is at stake".

Abdul Qadir travelled with a small caravan heading for Baghdad. During the journey, when the caravan was passing through the tough terrains, a group of robbers on horses suddenly attacked the caravan and started looting. None of them however took the slightest notice of Abdul Qadir, until one of the looters turned to him and said. "You are here poor man. Do you have anything with you? Abdul Qadir replied, "I have got 40 Dinars which are stitched by my mother in the lining of my coat underneath my armpit." The looter smiled and thought that Abdul Qadir was just joking. He left him alone and moved elsewhere. Then the second looter came and asked the same thing. Abdul Qadir again repeated his answer. The looter also didn't believe him and left him. When their leader came and they took this boy to their leader and said to him, "This boy looks like a beggar but claims that he is in possession of 40 gold coins. We looted everybody but we have not touched him because we hardly believed that he has got gold coins with him and he is trying to fool ourselves". Then the leader put the same question but Abdul Qadir replied the same. Then the leader ripped through his coat and discovered that he indeed got 40 gold coins inside the lining of his coat.

The astonished leader asked Abdul Qadir, what prompted him to make this confession? Abdul Qadir replied. "My mother made me promise to always be truthful even at the cost of my life". Here, it was a matter of only 40 Dinars. I promised her and never betrayed her trust so I told the truth. The looters started weeping and said, you have adhered to the advice of your great mother but we have been betraying the trust of our parents and the covenant of our Creator for many years. From now onwards, you would become our leader in our repentance and they all decided to give up robbery and from that day they became righteous persons. Here the world saw a birth of a great saint, Shiek Abdul Qadir Al-Gilani out of truth a mother gave to her child.

Apart from creating digital films on such stories, they can also be used to create in the minds of the children concepts which will create a spirit that "I can do it".

Nothing is impossible?

Human flight is nothing but creativity of human mind and it undergoes several struggles to achieve excellence. In 1895, a great well-known scientist Lord Kelvin, who was the President of Royal Society of London said, "any thing heavier than air cannot fly, and cannot be flown." Within a decade, Wright Brothers proved man could fly of course at heavy risk and cost.

On the successful completion of Moon Mission in 1969, Von Braun, a very famous rocket designer, who built Saturn-V, to launch the capsule with astronauts and made moon walk a reality, in 1975 said "If I am authorized, I will remove the word impossible".

According to the laws of aerodynamics the bumble bee should never be able to fly. Because of the size, weight, and shape of its body in relationship to the total wing span, flying is scientifically impossible. The bumble bee, being ignorant of scientific theory, goes ahead and flies anyway.

Friends, this can be the second content for the digital film. Is it not? I would like the youth assembled here to take a lesson from these examples and work to make everything possible.

All the technological advancements we have today are the outcome of scientific exploration of scientists of earlier centuries. At no time, man was beaten by problems. He strives continuously to subjugate impossibility and then succeeds.

Now let me discuss another dimension on how to promote an enquiring mind among the children.

Propagate the probing of scientific minds

Towards Raman Effect: Why is the sea blue? The view has been expressed that the dark blue of the deep sea has nothing to do with the color of water. It is simply the blue of the sky seen by reflection. Sir CV Raman then questions this view describing his own experiment on board the ship: Observations made in this way in the deeper waters of Mediterranean and Red sea showed that the color so far, from being impoverished by suppression of sky reflection was wonderfully improved here by. It was abundantly clear from the observation that the blue color of the deep sea is a distinct phenomenon itself and not merely an effect due to reflected sky light. Later Raman draws attention to the connection between the color of deep waters and the Einstein Smoluchowski formula. Naturally he starts with that the sky is blue because of scattering of light by the molecules in the upper atmosphere. The color of the sea is a different matter. Rayleigh believes it was all due to reflection, but Raman gives an entirely different view, that in this phenomenon, as in the parallel case of the color of sky, molecular diffraction determines the observed luminosity and in great measure also its color. Hence the birth of the Raman Effect.

Now let us study how great scientists in their school days got shaped for science. First let us take up the example of Albert Einstein.

Teachers influence: In Albert Einstein life, we find that his interest in science started early, beginning with his encounter with magnetism, which he called "the first miracle". He was given a compass by his father and Einstein was endlessly fascinated by the fact that invisible forces could make object move. This experience made a lasting impression on him. His interest in compasses was reinforced when he found a caring mentor to hone his ideas. At the age of 12, he experienced second wonder in a little book given by his mentor Max Talmud with Euclidean plain Geometry which he called "Holy Geometry Book". Einstein called this his "second miracle". Here Einstein made contact with the realm of pure thought. Without expensive laboratories or equipment, he could explore universal truth, limited only by the power of human mind. Mathematics became an endless source of pleasure to Einstein especially if intriguing puzzle and mysteries were involved.

Now let me administer the seven point oath to the children.

Seven Point Oath

1. I realize, I have to set a goal in my life. To achieve the goal, I will acquire the knowledge, I will work hard, and when the problem occurs, I have to defeat the problem and succeed.

2. As a youth of my nation, I will work and work with courage to achieve success in all my tasks and enjoy the success of others.

3. I shall always keep myself, my home, my surroundings, neighbourhood and environment clean and tidy.

4. I realize righteousness in the heart leads to beauty in the character, beauty in the character brings harmony in the home, harmony in the home leads to order in the nation and order in the nation leads to peace in the world.

5. I will lead an honest life free from all corruption and will set an example for others to adopt a righteous way of life.

6. I will light the lamp of knowledge in the nation and ensure that it remains lit for ever.

7. I realize, whatever work I do if I do the best, I am contributing towards realizing the vision of developed India 2020.

My greetings to all the participants children's film society during the Golden Jubilee Film Festival. My best wishes to all of you for success in all your endeavours.

May God bless you all.