The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Coimbatore News : "Focus more on capacity building"

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 07, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

"Focus more on capacity building"

Staff Reporter

Universities should equip students with creativity and innovative skills: Kalam Universities should equip students with innovative skills, says Kalam

A RESOURCEFUL MOVE: President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam pressing a button to launch the village resource centres, a joint project of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Amrita Vishwa Vidya Peetam. Chief Operating Officer of the Vidyapeetam, Br ahmachari Abhayamrita Chaitanya (extreme left), Governor S.S. Barnala (second from left) and ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair (extreme right) look on. — Photo: S. Siva Saravanan

COIMBATORE: : With society becoming knowledge-based, universities should focus on capacity building, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam said on Wednesday.

From being an agriculture society, it became an industrialised one, with the focus on management of labour. Now it became an information society, he said at a function, organised by the Amrita Vishwa Vidya Peetham and the Indian Space Research Organisation at Ettimadai, for launching village resource centres (VRC), a joint initiative.

The stress should be on utilising knowledge efficiently to improve the country's wealth and the lot of the people.

"For preparing the future generations for a knowledge-based society... , the universities should focus more on capacity building. It should be with a view to equipping the students with creativity and innovative skills, which will be relevant to society and needs... ," he said.

Village resource centres

The village resource centres would function as catalysts for putting the 2.3 lakh rural panchayats on a par with urban areas.

Their mission was to provide e-connectivity to 700 million people — 70 per cent of the country's population living in six lakh villages — and create knowledge connectivity to make rural areas prosperous.

"Such measures will fulfil my dream of turning India into a developed country by 2020," he said.

"The VRCs are not mere gadgets; but what matters more in them is content that is frequently updated," he said.

He urged ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair to update contents on wind conditions for the benefit of fishermen, weather conditions for farmers, and market conditions for both. Thus the VRCs should become nodal centres for knowledge connectivity.

Mr. Madhavan Nair said the organisation, which made a small beginning under leadership of Vikram Sarabhai, became self-reliant and was leading in space research.

The ISRO was preparing to launch VRCs for a cluster of 200 villages.

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