Increasing government expenditure on schooling and higher education will pave the way for strengthening and protecting democracy and the fruits of economic growth to reach all sections of society, said G Viswanathan, Founder and Chancellor of VIT University, on Saturday. He was delivering an address at the second annual convocation of VIT University’s Chennai campus.
Former Governor of Tamil Nadu and Assam, Bhishma Narain Singh, was the chief guest and NT Arunkumar, Board Director and Strategic Adviser (Tata Group Co, FinTech and Analytics Start-up, Financial Services, Special Representative for IT and Innovation - Government of Andhra Pradesh), was the guest of honour.
Viswanathan also said that only five per cent of Indians are able to pursue higher education in India even 70 years after Independence, while it was 40 per cent in the United States. Among Indians in the United State, the figure stood at more than 50 per cent. “Hence, it is important that we concentrate on education in order to protect and strengthen democracy. The top one per cent of the population owns 58 per cent of the wealth of the country. The 57 billionaires in India own 70 per cent of people’s wealth. We are taking a lot of efforts to improve school education, but we are lagging behind in higher education. When Nehru was the Prime Minister, a committee was formed under the leadership of former President S Radhakrishnan. It recommended that at least six per cent of India’s GDP be spent on education. As of now, the amount spent on education had not reached even four per cent of the GDP."
In his address, Arunkumar said that the graduates’ education ended today, but their learning began today. He urged graduates to be prepared to wake to a new reality that this world, especially India, was getting into. A future cannot be created unless lessons of our past are learnt.
Narain Singh said that attending the convocation in VIT University was like a homecoming to him as he had earlier served as the Governor of Tamil Nadu. He added that the function of any university is not just to send out technically skilled and professionally competent people, but also inculcate compassion and selflessness in them.