Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi today stressed on the need for taking the high traditions of ‘Gurukul’ system of education to the level of ‘Global School’ to build a strong nation and to let the youth to showcase India’s strengths to the world.

Speaking on ‘Role of Education in Nation Building’ in a tete-a-tete with 1,500 students of Fergusson College run by 128-year-old Deccan Education Society of Pune (Maharashtra), he held neglect of Human Resource Development (HRD) responsible for stifling the aspirations and growth of the youth. He had earlier reached out to 2,500 students for their opinions through social media.

Paying his tribute to the alumnus of this historic college like freedom fighter Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Mr. Modi said that he could still feel the reverberating from the walls of this historic college. He also took round of the historic hostel building and that of recently renovated 101-year-old amphitheatre.

He said the nation is passing through an atmosphere of despondency. India is a land of jewels. There is no need for gloom. Youth is our future. When India was a slave country, Lokmanya Tilak had given a call for ‘Self-Rule is Our Birthright’.

Mr. Modi recalled that India had dominated the quest for learning since 600 BC for 1,800 long years, having set up universities at Nalanda, Taxashila and Vallabhi. In the recent past too, our great personalities set up great institutions like Santiniketan, Banaras Hindu University and Gujarat Vidyapith. Kerala is ahead of other states in India because they paid attention to education, inspired by leaders like Narayan Guru. But, post-Independence, we seemed to have lost our direction, neglected our education and engaged ourselves in money-making rather than man-making, least concerned about building universities or nation building. We hang our head in shame with the scale of corruption during the Commonwealth Games.

He said that India was respected as vishwa guru in the past because there was excellent guru-disciple relation. There is need for good teachers to produce good citizens even as teachers could play the role of cultural ambassadors true to spirit of vasudhaivakutumbakam.

Comparing China with India, he said that China had prepared its vision in 1978, identified four-five fields for excellence and set a goal to ensure that there should be at least 40 Chinese universities in the world’s Top 500 Universities by 2000. It has 32 ‘world class’ universities now. China spends 20 per cent of its GDP on education, India spends 4 per cent. China and India produced same number of Ph.D. ten years back. Today, China produces seven times more Ph.D. than India. In foreign countries, doctoral theses form the basis of government policies. In India, scholars have no value. No nation can progress without academic excellence.

Mr. Modi wondered as to when India would explore its huge potential in tourism, inspire farmers to take up agro-tech farming, really empower youth to women to their fullest capacity, plan ahead for rapid infrastructure development and urbanization, or would start courses in marine engineering looking to its long coastline?

Talking about Gujarat, he said it was the first state to introduce pharmacy as a course of study 50 years ago and today it rules the pharmaceutical industry. The state has set up specialized universities for forensic science, raksha shakti for security as it has launched massive skill development programme to increase employability of pass-outs.