Chennai: Justice T.Raja of Madras High court has appealed to students to come up with new technology and newer steps to help society and younger generation.
Addressing the University Day and Annual Sports Day function held at VIT, Vellore on Saturday, he spoke about how Nalanda University provided high quality education to all students including those from foreign countries and VIT also imparting high quality education to students from India and abroad.
The Judge appreciated VIT management for providing conducive atmosphere with excellent infrastructure for students to get good quality education. “After visiting this university and seeing its infrastructure it gives immense pleasure that I visited one of the top universities in the world,” he said.
VIT Chancellor Dr. G. Viswanathan urged Government to provide free quality education to all children in the country. About 40 countries offers higher education free to students, of which countries like Norway, Sweden, Germany, France offer free education to foreign students also. “It may not be possible for us to provide free education to foreign students, but we must be able to give free education to our own children. We have suggested that if it is not possible immediately let us begin with free education to girls now; later, we can expand to others also,” he said. The chancellor also said that Education Promotion Society of India (EPSI), in which he is the President, made a request to all political parties to give needed importance to education.
Pointing out that any welfare state should spend enough money on social infrastructure, mainly on education and health, as education improves not only family but also society and the country, the chancellor said that Central Government should spend at least six per cent of the GDP on education, but only four per cent of GDP is now spent for education.
He said, “the new government at the Centre should allocate six per cent of GDP expenditure to higher education and increase it by one per cent every year as we need to cover all the students so that they get school education as well as higher education and I hope it will happen”, he said. The VIT has provided scholarships of `16.07 crore to students by various scholarships this year.
Dr. Sekar Viswanathan, vice-president, VIT, said students learn a lot outside the classroom at VIT and it has been an active campus. As many as 2,142 students got scholarships worth `90 lakh at the function.
Dr. Sandhya Pentareddy, executive director, Dr.Anand A.Samuel, vice chancellor, Dr. S. Narayanan,pro VC, Dr K.Sathiyanarayanan, registrar, VIT also took part. Sanjay.V received the Chancellor’s gold medal and best outgoing student award, and Ms. Amala Kaviya bagged the chancellor’s special award.
