The Hindu : 'Population will be an asset if education is prioritised'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 17, 2003

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'Population will be an asset if education is prioritised'

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI NOV. 16. The Wipro Chairman, Azim Premji, said today that India would be able to turn its huge population into an asset if education was prioritised in the national agenda; not just in discourse but in action also.

Delivering the 35th Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture, Mr. Premji said that with the productive population poised to grow at a time when it would fall in relative terms in all the major nations of the world, "India will be the powerhouse of the most important resource — the productive human spirit.''

The first industrialist to be invited by the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund to deliver the lecture, he said "this is our chance" to shape a future "which will inevitably compel the world to recognise this as the Indian century.''

"This will depend not wholly, but substantially, on what choice we make on our education system.''

Though appreciative of the system and the efforts being made to educate the masses, he said the need of the hour was "positive transformation" and not "mere tinkering."

Probably addressing the various Opposition leaders present among the audience, Mr. Premji said: "Will we continue with the present blinkered system which can in no way adequately nurture our unique talent pool? Or will the key stakeholders join together and transform the system to facilitate true, lasting and relevant learning for every child which inevitably will lead to a turbo-charging of our unique human resource pool.''

Earlier, addressing the gathering, the Congress president and chairperson of the Fund, Sonia Gandhi, said the global acknowledgment of Indian talent in science and technology was based on the edifice conceived and constructed by the country's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

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