E-Paper
Education as important as GDP, says Pranab
New Delhi
New Delhi
Former President of India Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday said education is the foundation of happiness for people and it is as important as economic factors such as gross domestic product (GDP) and growth of industrial and agricultural products and services .
“Today, the world is talking not just about GDP but about a new concept of gross happiness, that has developed side by side. Happiness is important and the basic foundation of that happiness is education,” said Mukherjee at the book launch of Delhi’s deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia.
While releasing the book titled ‘Shiksha’, Mukherjee, who is also a former finance minister, congratulated Sisodia and said, “I thank you for writing a book not for research scholars but for ordinary teachers and practitioners in the field of education.”
Mukherjee greeted teachers present in the auditorium on Teachers Day and said students should be encouraged to ask questions.
Delhi’s chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said that Sisodia’s book chronicled the journey of his government in revolutionising education in Delhi. “The work in the field of education in Delhi in the last five years has been witnessed by the entire country and the world. Many say it is not less than a revolution. Delhi is now a story of hope for the rest of India,” he said.
Kejriwal said his government received a lot of guidance from Mukherjee in improving the education sector in Delhi because he himself had great interest in it.
The turnaround in education in Delhi involved three phases beginning with “clerical corrections” focused on improving the infrastructure, followed by motivation and training of principals and teachers and finally focussing on the curriculum, Kejriwal said.
Elaborating on the content of the book, Sisodia, who is also Delhi’s education and finance minister, said he has briefly drafted the narrative in two parts. The first part focussing on “fixing the foundation of education” and the latter on “using education for building a new India”.
