Former president of India A P J Abdul Kalam Thursday asked students to work towards establishing a societal grid comprising the sectors of knowledge, health, e-governance and rural development for accelerating economic growth of the country.
Inaugurating 'Conscientia-2010,' the science and technology festival of students at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology here in India's southern state of
Kerala, Kalam said the 700 million people in 600,000 villages in the country should be electronically connected to achieve development.
"We need to provide villagers with knowledge connectivity that would bring economic connectivity enabling them to have better earning capacity," he said.
Kalam wanted students to have an aim in life before 20 years of age, acquire knowledge and continuously work hard towards the aim with perseverance to defeat problems in the way to succeed. "You should decide on what you will be
remembered for," he said.
Kalam unveiled his vision of the country's profile by the year 2020 in which rural-urban divide should be reduced. The nation should progress towards equitable distribution of
energy and water and focus on agriculture, food processing, IT, communication technology and healthcare in the next ten years, he said.
Kalam said agriculture, industry and service sectors should work together in symphony and education should be mae available to all meritorious candidates without societal or
economic discrimination.
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K Radhakrishnan, said ISRO's `astrosat' would be launched within two years. The discovery of the presence of ice in the polar regions of the moon by Chandrayaan-1 was a matter of pride for the nation.
Students from various engineering colleges are
participating in the event which would conclude on March 7.
Earlier in the day, Kalam attended a function at the Kerala Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) where he interacted with the faculty, doctors, nurses, nursing students and the
paramedical staff.
In his speech, Kalam said primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare should work in unison to achieve desired results in the health sector.
He said in the present electronically connected era, practising doctors and healthcare professionals could get access to the latest information through literature and consultancy.
Development of tele-health systems would be important to support health centres in remote locations and deliver educational programmes to them, he said. There should be good contact among doctors, nurses, paramedical personnel and the patients, Kalam said.