Kalam harps on entrepreneurship among youths

Kolkata, Dec 6 (UNI) President A P J Abdul Kalam today emphasised on entrepreneurship in small-scale sectors among the youths to sustain the present growth of Indian economy.

Delivering the Convocation address of the Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management(IISWBM) here, Dr Kalam said the mantra for becoming a true entrepreneur was to maintain the cost competitiveness of the products and effective management of their quality.

Referring to his rich experience in dealing with the children from all strata, the President wondered that about 90 per cent of them wanted to become either an engineer or a doctor, a pilot or some even politician, but only a very few vouched for entrepreneurship.

This, he said, was primarily because of lack of any provision, particulaly in rural India, for providing basic entrepreneurship training to the young minds.

Coming back to his dream project of Providing Urban Facilities to Rural Areas(PURA) in 60,000-odd villages of India after forming several clusters, Dr Kalam said through the development of small-scale business formulae, millions of villagers would be benefitted across the country which in turn would boost the rural economy to a great extent.

Referring to the tremendous competition in the world market for quality products, Dr Kalam said in both developed and developing economy no industry could afford to neglect the importance of maintaining a perfect balance between the top class quality and cost competitiveness of their products.

In this conection he also urged the IISWBM students to be more conscious about the qualitative management of what they had learnt and apply them perfectly for the betterment of the society and the the nation.

Earlier, a total of 235 IISWBM students were honoured with graduate and post-graduate diplomas in different subjects with 13 toppers being awarded with gold and silver medals by the President.

Among others Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, West Bengal Higher Education Minister Sudharshan Chakraborty, former Union Education Minister and president Board of Governors, IISWBM, Pratap Chandra Chanda and its Director Ashok Dutta were present.

President Kalam also presented several books to the IISWBM Library from his collection.

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