President urges creation of global youth cadres

Hyderabad, Feb 1 (UNI) President A P J Abdul Kalam today urged educational institutions to create a global cadre of the skilled youth with specific skills and another cadre of the youth with higher education.

''These two cadres will be required not only for powering the manufacturing and services sector of India but will also be needed for fulfilling human resource requirements of various countries,'' he noted while delivering the 77th convocation address at the Osmania University.

India presently had 540 million youth under the age of 25 and the numbers would increase further, he observed and added that no Indian youth should be without either a world class higher education or without world class skill sets.

For realizing the two cadres, Dr Kalam said, the universities and secondary school education system should increase the through put of the higher education system from the existing 11 per cent to 20 per cent by the year 2015, 30 per cent by 2020 and 50 per cent by 2040.

The other Indians who were uncovered by the higher education system should have world class skill sets in areas like 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, among other things.

Osmania University had an important role to play in creating and nurturing the global human resource cadre in Andhra Pradesh, he said.

Stressing the importance of research, he said both research and teaching go hand in hand in good colleges and universities. ''I am happy that Osmania University is carrying out research in areas of science, technology, humanities, social sciences, language and the Indian culture. I am sure the research results from these studies will definitely provide valuable inputs for structuring the education system needed for transforming our youth into enlightened citizens.'' Recalling that the Nizam had made primary education compulsory and had provided it free of cost to the poor, he expressed confidence that compulsory primary education would be implemented throughout the country this year.

UNI