Convocation Address Bundelkhand University, Jhansi

CHALLENGES FOR A KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY

I am indeed delighted to participate in the 11th Convocation of the Bundelkhand University. My greetings to the Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, Faculty Members, distinguished guests, students and all members of Bundelkhand University. I congratulate the Faculty for shaping the young minds. The Universities have a major responsibility in nation building through enriching Science, Engineering and Technology and by providing value based education to students to make them moral leaders. I am happy to note that Bundelkhand University has contributed substantially in the development of higher learning in this region. I was thinking what thoughts I can share with you on this occasion. I have selected the topic ?Challenges for a Knowledge Society?.

Core competence for Knowledge Society

Knowledge has always been the prime mover for prosperity. A knowledge society is one of the basic foundations for the development of any nation. Knowledge has many forms and it is available at many places. The acquisition of knowledge has therefore been the thrust area throughout the world and sharing the experience of knowledge is a unique culture of our country. India is a nation endowed with natural and competitive advantages as also certain distinctive competencies. But these are scattered in isolated pockets and the awareness on these is inadequate. During the last few centuries the world has undergone a change from agriculture society, where natural labour was the critical factor, to industrial society where the management of technology, capital and labour provided the competitive advantage. In the 21st century, a new society is emerging where knowledge is the primary production resource instead of capital and labour. Efficient utilisation of existing knowledge can create comprehensive wealth for the nation in the form of better health, education, infrastructure etc. for improving the quality of life. Ability to create and maintain the knowledge infrastructure, develop knowledge workers and enhance their productivity through creation, growth and use of new knowledge will be the key factors in deciding the prosperity of this Knowledge Society. Whether a nation has emerged as a knowledge society or not is judged by the way the country effectively deals with knowledge creation and knowledge deployment.

Dimensions of Knowledge Society

I was studying different dimensions of knowledge society, how will it be different from the industrial economy. In the knowledge economy the objective of a society changes from fulfilling the basic needs of all round development to empowerment. The education system instead of going by text book teaching will be promoted by creative, interactive self learning ? formal and informal with focus on values, merit and quality. The workers instead of being skilled or semi-skilled will be knowledgeable, self-empowered and flexibly skilled. The type of work instead of being structured and hardware driven will be less structured and software driven. Management style will emphasize more on delegation rather than giving command. Impact on environment and ecology will be strikingly less compared to industrial economy. Finally, the economy will be knowledge driven and not industry driven.

Knowledge Society Components

Knowledge Society has two very important components driven by societal transformation and wealth generation. The societal transformation is on education, healthcare, agriculture and governance. These will lead to employment generation, high productivity and rural prosperity. How do we do that?

The wealth generation is a very important task for the nation, which has to be woven around national competencies such as Information Technology, bio-technology, space technology, weather forecasting, disaster management, tele-medicine and tele-education, technologies to produce native knowledge products, service sector and Infotainment. These technologies and management structures have to work together to generate knowledge society.

Evolution of policy and administrative procedures, changes in regulatory methods, identification of partners and most importantly creation of young and dynamic leaders are the components to be in place. In order to generate wealth, which is the second component for establishing a knowledge society, it is essential that simultaneously a citizen-centric approach to evolution of business policy, user-driven technology generation and intensified industry-lab-academy linkages have also to be established in every country.

Knowledge Management

The systematic process of finding, selecting, organizing, distilling and presenting information, improves an employee's comprehension in a specific area of interest. Knowledge management helps an organization to gain insight and understanding from its own experience. Specific knowledge management activities help focus the organization on acquiring, storing and utilizing knowledge for problem solving, dynamic learning, strategic planning and decision making. It also prevents intellectual assets from decay, adds to firm intelligence and provides increased flexibility.

Knowledge creation has two dimensions, one is explicit knowledge and the other one is implicit knowledge. The explicit knowledge comes from published books, written materials, proceedings, presentations etc., whereas the implicit knowledge is derived through the systematic observation and capturing of data from the tacit knowledge available among the individuals in the organization, through their approach to problem solving, bottle-neck removal, goals setting, interactions etc. We need a systematic mechanism to capture this knowledge to make the organization a truly learning organization which makes use of existing knowledge judiciously and efficiently. Digital library is an important component for capturing the explicit knowledge. This has to be supplemented with the implicit knowledge to the digital library system, which will eventually get transformed into a knowledge management system.

Virtual University

It is time that we should start looking at the possibility of creating a Virtual University in India through networking of all the universities and other educational institutions for imparting universal tele-education. Virtual university will have the following tasks:

a) Act as a central hub of all universities, which are networked.

b) Identify experts of national/international eminence in specialized areas.

c) Coordinate, organize, schedule and broadcast the lecture of specialists at a mutually convenient time to all participants.

d) Record the live transmission of the lecture with interaction details in a data bank for easy access by participants for review learning.

e) Digitize all the university libraries and make it available for seamless access by all the universities.

f) The universities need to become learner centric.

This experiment across the country will provide a common platform for teaching in Schools, Colleges and Universities and even vocational courses. This will give equal emphasis on theory and experiments in spite of the fact that it will be done in the cyberspace. Such is the power of the technology and our understanding of it. This facility would also help in expansion of telecommunication and IT services. All this would lead to synergising the strengths of different universities in promoting quality education to our students in a cost effective manner.

Digital library

Digital library is an important component for capturing the explicit knowledge. This has to be supplemented with the implicit knowledge to the digital library system, which will eventually get transformed into a knowledge management system.

There is a mission of Digital library web portal to create a portal for digital library of India piloted by the Ministry of Information Technology (MIT) with IISc and Carnegie Mellon University as partners for fostering creativity and free access to all human knowledge. This digital library as a first step will create a free-to-read searchable collection of one million books by 2005 in India. This library was launched in 2003. Prof.N Balakrishnan, Chief Coordinator of Digital Library of India informed me that, so far 20 centers are operational throughout the country, over 75,000 books have been digitized of which nearly 40,000 are in 9 Indian languages. In the library of Rashtrapati Bhavan, which is part of the Digital Library of India, we have so far digitized over one million pages and also we are digitizing our old official records leading to e-governance implementation. The Digital Library of India data will be available for use by different institutions in the country and abroad, depending upon their needs. I suggest Bundelkhand University may join in this mission.

Technological Breakthrough in Connectivity

A great majority of our people live in villages and small towns and it is often difficult for them to gain access to high quality education. On the other hand, it is also difficult and expensive to set up elaborate facilities in all villages and rural areas. There is a serious shortage of both infrastructure and human resource for teaching in the education sector throughout the country. Distance education can overcome the limitations of geographical inaccessibility of the area, economic status, gender divide and age difference and bring quality education to all through tele-education system. An Education Satellite System conceived by ISRO will be a boon in this context; it is envisaged that it will meet the challenge of number and quality by facilitating effective teachers training and curriculum based teaching in several regional languages, and also by providing access to quality resource persons especially in higher and professional education. It is expected to strengthen the distance education efforts initiated by various agencies and take education to every nook and corner of the country and provide access to new technologies. The Universities in particular will benefit by the Satellite Education Programme through synergy and connectivity between the various institutions at a relatively low cost.

Employment Generation through entrepreneurship

There has been substantial growth in our higher educational system and we are generating over 3 million graduates every year. However our employment generation system is not in a position to absorb the graduates passing out from the universities leading to increase in educated unemployed, year after year. This situation will lead to instability in the social structure. We need higher education backed by employment opportunities. A multi pronged strategy is needed to make education more attractive and simultaneously create employment potential ? how do we do that?

Firstly, the educational system should highlight the importance of entrepreneurship and prepare the students right from the college education to get oriented towards setting up of the smalls-scale industrial enterprises and any ventures in our rural areas which will provide them creativity, freedom and ability to generate wealth. Apart from entrepreneurship, the youth should have the spirit that ?we can do it?. Secondly, the banking system should provide venture capital right from every village level to the prospective entrepreneurs for undertaking new enterprises. Banks have to be proactive to support the innovative products for enabling wealth generation by young entrepreneurs by setting aside the ?conventional tangible asset syndrome?. Definitely this involves certain amount of calculated risks which can be eliminated by making an analysis of successful venture capital enterprises. Thirdly, there is a need to identify marketable products and enhancement of purchasing power among the people. University with its large network of colleges and institutions can coordinate with marketing agencies for identifying marketable products.

Conclusion: Righteousness is the foundation for World Peace

Righteousness of the heart of the human being leads to a perfect life of an enlightened citizen. This is beautifully explained in ascent and descent phase of human life by Confucius. He states that ?People who desired to have a clear moral harmony in the world, would first order their national life; those who desire to order their national life would first regulate their home life; those who desire to regulate their home life would first cultivate their personal lives; those who desired to cultivate their personal lives set their heart to righteousness, would first make their wills sincere; those who desire to make their wills sincere would first arrive at understanding; understanding comes from the exploration of knowledge of things. When the knowledge of things is gained, then understanding is reached; when understanding is reached, then the will is sincere; when the will is sincere then the heart is righteous; when the heart is righteous then the personal life is cultivated; when the personal life is cultivated, then the home life is regulated; when the home life is regulated, then the national life is orderly; when the national life is orderly then the world is at peace. From the Emperor down to the common man, the cultivation of the righteous life is the foundation for all.

May God bless you.