FEBRUARY 2014

Friedman came to India and stayed for
a month and visited Bangalore and other
places. Based on his news analysis he wrote
a book titled “The World is Flat”. This book
has become famous not only in India but
throughout the world. Such is the power of
research. I would suggest our Indian newspaper
agencies should encourage research
being carried out by our correspondents
and journalists within India in academic
research institutions, which will definitely
improve the quality of our reporting and
enhance the participation of journalists in
national development missions.
In the present development context of
the nation, I would like grassroots journalists
to take up the theme of a Developed
India by 2020 as their primary mission. To
achieve this the journalists must become
development partners in the programme of
PURA, energy independence mission, celebrate
every aspect of success of the nation
particularly in rural areas, work towards
promotion of a corruption free society, help
in the creation of enlightened citizens and
promote harmony in the nation.
Grassroots journalists should have a
big aim of the concern of a billion people.
Fortunately, India has a vision and has the
youth power which is the engine that can
give the thrust to the movement towards
growth. Ignited minds of the youth are
the most powerful resource compared to
any other resource on the Earth, above
the Earth and under the Earth. The Indian
youth faces the twin problems of provision
of quality education to a large number of
people, that means in institutions of higher
learning such as engineering, medical and
specialized sciences. We have to ensure that
The real mission of the media is
to be where there are sweet tears
and salty tears. While tears are
sweet, spread the happy messages
throughout the country
a large number of seats are made available.
This mission can be achieved by the publicprivate
partnership. In this connection I
have developed a system of global human
resource cadre. In the 21st century, India
needs large number of talented youth with
higher education for the task of knowledge
acquisition, knowledge imparting, knowledge
creation and knowledge sharing. I
am working for it. At present India has five
hundred and forty million youth under the
» Kalam and Vajpayee at Pokhran Nuclear test Site
age of 25, which will continuously be growing
till the year 2050.
Keeping this resource in mind, the Universities
and educational systems should
create two cadres of personnel a global cadre
of skilled youth with specific knowledge
of special skills and another global cadre of
youth with higher education. These two
cadres will be required not only for powering
the manufacturing and services sector
of India but also will be needed for fulfilling
the human resource requirements of
various countries. Thus, the universities
will have to work towards increasing the
throughput of the higher education system
from the existing 6% to 20% by the year
2015, 30% by the year 2020 and 50% by the
year 2040.
The other Indians who are not covered
by the higher education system should all
have world class skill sets in areas such as
construction, carpentry, electrical systems,
repair of mechanical systems, fashion design,
para-legal, para-medical, accountancy,
sales and marketing, software and
hardware maintenance and service, software
quality assurance personals etc. No
Indian youth should be without either a
world-class higher education or without
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world-class skills sets.
The second problem which the youth
faces is that of the generation of employment
for about 40 million people. That
means our education system has to become
entrepreneurial oriented, both in schools
and colleges, so that we can create employment
generators and not employment
seekers. I have discussed these important
subjects in my national address on education,
employment generation and energy
independence.
The real mission of the media is to be
where there are sweet tears and salty tears.
While tears are sweet, spread the happy
messages throughout the country. While
the tears are salty, critically analyze and
spread the message with possible solutions.
The grassroots journalists can certainly provide
a positive direction for development by
becoming the multiple sails of the ship.
I have always believed that the first loyalty
of a media must be towards the people the nation.
A media should be independent from
any individual, party and organisations.
The author is former President of India
and an acclaimed scientist
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