Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley called upon The Doon School to face the challenge of creating excellent minds which are linked to the reality of India and which do not intellectually cut themselves off from the challenges the country faced.
Speaking at the school’s open-air Rose Bowl auditorium as the chief guest on the 81st Founder’s Day of the school on Saturday evening, Jaitley said that many educational institutions in the country were faced with this challenge today. “Excellence helps the larger public good and gives us people with new ideas, minds, which lead the society,” he said. He further said that the school should think whether it is producing “only the elite” or also these kinds of excellent minds. He called upon the students to take advantage of having passed out of this school and get on “to the fast track as fast as possible to reach destinations of high quality.”
He said that if he looked ten or 20 years ahead , he could see that the network of educational institutions coming up in the country was going to throw up a great resource not just nationally but also globally. “I also believe that in the coming years, the condition of rural India, especially tribals, must be addressed and improved.”
The Minister said that India had become too competitive and thus the students were finding it tough to get admissions in colleges and other institutions despite having good marks.
He said that the large number of private institutions of higher education coming up in the country will turn into quality institutions in the next few years and then, the students would get more opportunities of admission.
“The struggle for excellence has become far more difficult today. Standards of excellence are far higher,” he said. Though there was a large crowd at the bottom, there was a huge space at the top for people who had unconventional ideas and who thought differently, he said, adding, “These people break new ground and do not follow the conventional path.”
Jaitley said India had earlier lacked the “killer instinct” but now it was “aspirational and impatient”. He said educational institutions face many challenges to produce persons who would help the country shine globally. “If the IITs had not done so, India would not have been able to contribute to the digital revolution,” added the Minister.
Concluding his speech, the Union Finance Minister said that the Doon School had a great history behind it, but “the best is still to come.”