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‘Educational institutes help promote equality and justice’: President Murmu
Murmu was addressing the closing ceremony of the two-day visitor’s conference held at Rashtrapati Bhawan
India’s higher education institutions are among the most effective platforms for promoting constitutional ideals of justice, equality, fraternity, individual dignity and respect for women, President Droupadi Murmu said on Tuesday.
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Murmu was addressing the closing ceremony of the two-day visitor’s conference held at Rashtrapati Bhawan. The conference was attended by education minister Dharmendra Pradhan and more than 150 heads of institutions including central universities, Indian Institutes of Technology, National Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research and National Institutes of Pharmaceutical Education and Research.
The conference -- “Education for Sustainable Development: Building a better world” -- saw parallel sessions on five themes including ones on national education policy, internationalization efforts, research contributions, diversity, equality, inclusivity and wellness. The themes of the conference were “extremely relevant for our country as well as for the entire world”, the President said.
The session on diversity, equality, inclusivity and wellness, headed by V Kamakoti, director of IIT Madras, discussed efforts by education institutions on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
“The DEI efforts included reduction of gender bias, ensuring ease of living for physically challenged steps to improve participation of women in leadership roles. The deliberations brought out a wide range of suggestions on how to ensure the happiness, well-being and development of our students and faculty,” the education ministry said in a statement.
In her inaugural address on Monday, the President had raised concerns over a spate of suicides among students reported at IITs and stressed that educational institutions should make it their priority to protect and support their students against stress, humiliation or neglect in their campuses.
Highlighting the importance of innovation and cutting edge research and development for economic and social development of a nation, Murmu said leading universities and technology institutions in the world have focussed on innovation.
“The higher education institutions in our country have the potential of becoming powerhouses of research and innovations,” the President said “I am confident that the heads of institutions of higher education would lead their institutions towards promoting innovation that can be used for industrial and commercial purposes.”
The President pointed out that developed countries are known for their higher educational institutions. “Students from across the world want to study in higher educational institutions of those countries. Such a road map has been given in India’s National Education Policy 2020, following which our higher educational institutions can also become global education centres,” she said. “I am confident that our higher educational institutions would become centers of world-class knowledge creation.”
In his concluding remarks on Tuesday, education minister Pradhan highlighted how mental and emotional well-being positively impacts motivation, focus and resilience among students. “By promoting well-being, institutions can provide students with tools and resources to prosper on campus and in life,” he said. “High-quality education can only be ensured by high-quality teaching, which will be possible when institutions handhold and mentor each other through collective effort.”
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University Grants Commission chairperson M Jagadesh Kumar, who headed a session on the education policy, said: “During the conference, it was decided to upscale the efforts on creating programmes with no hard separations between arts and sciences with an emphasis on conceptual understanding. We also decided to promote multilingualism and use the power of language in teaching and learning through extensive use of technology.”
The education ministry said that while many institutions have taken steps towards internationalization, it was discussed that “there is a need of increasing academic collaboration with top universities in the world and attracting foreign students to study in India”.
