Prez calls for strong innovation culture

President Pranab Mukherjee today called for an initiative to build a strong innovation culture in the country in higher education. After laying the foundation stone of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Hindi University, the President who addressed the gathering in Hindi to mark the occasion, said, "I call upon the university to take the initiative to build a strong innovation culture."

The university is being established at Mugalia Kot village near the state capital by the Madhya Pradesh government after former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's name, who has been a strong votary of Hindi language. The President said that 2010-20 has been declared as the decade of innovation. He said recently he had opened innovation clubs in two central universities in Uttar Pradesh and Assam and attended innovation exhibitions organised there. Stating that language plays an important role between the government and the people, the President said, "success of social welfare and development programme depends on language. Therefore, we should encourage Hindi and other regional languages." "Hindi has always played an important role in national integration. It is a symbol of India's social and cultural unity," Mukherjee said. The President also called upon the universities to take the lead in starting a sustained programme for meeting the contemporary moral challenges and ensuring that our civilisational values of love or motherland, performance of duty and compassion for all are inculcated in the young minds. He also asked the varsities to develop a programme for young people catering to tolerance for pluralism, respect for women and elderly, truth and honesty in life, discipline and self-restraint in conduct and responsibility in action. Later, Mukherjee also released a newsletter 'Atal Samvad', the first copy of which was presented to him. Addressing the function, Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj advised the state government to check growing erosion of Hindi language, specially the practice of using English words in Hindi. She also advised the university to ensure translation of rich literature available in other Indian languages and produce quality interpreters (translators), who can translate Hindi in foreign and other Indian languages easily as there is a lot of scope for such experts.