The Hindu : Harness the power of technology to help rural women: M.S. Swaminathan

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 22, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Harness the power of technology to help rural women: M.S. Swaminathan

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI, FEB.21. Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) should develop an Agenda 2007 which will harness the power of the modern information-communication technologies (ICT) to help rural women, make villages and towns more "child-friendly, conserve land and water resources and promote self-help movements, the agricultural scientist, M.S. Swaminathan, said on Saturday.

Addressing the 15th convocation at IGNOU's Chennai regional centre, he said Agenda 2007, comprising "precise tasks," should be accomplished by August 15, 2007 to mark the 60th anniversary of the nation's independence.

"We must harness the power of modern ICT and distance education tools to achieve the goals of food, water, health, education and work-for-all as soon as possible. This calls for programmes based on social inclusion and diversity in pedagogic methodologies." Particular attention should be paid to first-generation learners.

IGNOU should launch an "every village a knowledge centre movement," collaborating with 11 State open universities and the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation - TATA National Virtual Academy for Food Security and Rural Prosperity. "We can easily cover the 600,000 villages of our country by August 15, 2007, by using all the technologies, particularly community radio and the Internet."

These programmes should focus on `population stabilisation' to balance the pressures caused by human numbers and the supporting capacity of the ecosystem. Socio-economic demographic charters should be prepared at the local community level, based on ecological, water, energy, health and food security and promotion of gender equity aspects.

Village and urban local bodies should start a movement which would ensure that all children had birth certificates, survived the first year healthily, were fully immunised and were of the correct body weight, and that all of them particularly girls, attended school up to 14 years of age. The schools should offer hot cooked meal, and no girl should get married under 18.

The universities should ensure linkages among research and development efforts, credit institutions, markets and among the self-help groups. Institutions such as IGNOU were in a unique position to foster interactive learning and harness the power of technologies to reach out to the unreached.

Dr. Swaminathan gave away gold medals to students who topped in degree and diploma programmes of IGNOU: K. Lakshmi for diploma in management; G. Sharmilee of the BCA programme and T. Regi Thomas (Advanced Diploma in computer applications).

The Regional Director, Chennai, K. Soundaravalli, explaining the programmes offered by the university, said this year 7,041 candidates received degrees, diplomas and certificates.

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