President Pranab Mukherjee today called for a strong culture of innovation in the institutes if higher education in the country.
After laying the foundation stone of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Hindi University on the outskirts of Bhopal, the President who addressed the gathering in Hindi to mark the occasion, said "I call upon the university to take the initiative and build a strong culture of innovation."
The university is being established at Mugalia Kot village near the State capital by the Madhya Pradesh government and is named after former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who has always been a strong votary of Hindi language. The President said that 2010-20 had been declared as the decade of innovation.
He said recently he had opened innovation clubs in two Central universities in Uttar Pradesh and Assam and attended innovation exhibitions organised there. Stating that language plays an important role, the President said "success of social welfare and development programmes depends on language. Therefore, we should encourage Hindi and other regional languages." He further said Hindi had always played an important role in national integration. It is a symbol of India's social and cultural unity. Referring to the growing incidents of crime against women, he said that education had an important role to play in the development of society and the nation. "The recent rise in crimes against women and children is a cause for deep concern. It not only calls for effective measures for their safety and security, but also requires us to urgently introspect and find ways to arrest the erosion of values in our society," he said.The President also called upon the universities to take the lead in starting a sustained programme for meeting the contemporary moral challenges and ensuring that our civilisational values of love for motherland, performance of duty and compassion for all are inculcated in the young minds.
He also asked the varsities to develop a programme for young people catering to tolerance for pluralism, respect for women and elderly, truth and honesty in life, discipline and self-restraint in conduct and responsibility in action.
later, Mukherjee also released a newsletter, 'Atal Samvad', the first copy of which was presented to him. Addressing the function, leader of Opposition in lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj advised the State government to check growing erosion of Hindi language, specially the practice of using English words in Hindi.
She also advised the university to ensure translation of rich literature available in other Indian languages and produce quality interpretors (translators), who can translate Hindi in foreign and other Indian languages as there is a lot of scope for such experts.
The function was also addressed by Madhya Pradesh Governor Ram Naresh Yadav, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Culture and Public Relations Minister laxmikant Sharma and the university's Vice Chancellor Prof Mohanlal Cheepa.
Earlier, the President, who is on a three-day State visit, was accorded a ceremonial reception by the Governor and the Chief Minister on his arrival at Bhopal's Raja Bhoj airport.