Smriti Irani
Former Union Minister Smriti Irani addresses young leaders and uprising entrepreneurs at Kolkata event
Kolkata/IBNS: Former Union Minister Smriti Irani addressed the young leaders and uprising entrepreneurs and future change makers who have not only held positions but also created large-scale systems and frameworks that continue to shape India's future, at an event organised by Young Leaders Forum of the Indian Chamber of Commerce earlier this month.
Among her key initiatives she mentioned about, the establishment of 25,000 village education councils to localize decision making, the launch of Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds (SWAYAM), India’s first Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) platform, the digitization of National Digital Library, the introduction of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) to bring transparency and competitiveness to higher education.
She said, "I don't look at life as a prism of setbacks. I look at life from a perspective of opportunities. Setbacks make you sound like a victim. I hate that. I have an opinion that you have to be very fortunate to get opportunities to serve.
"Every opportunity may not culminate into success. You may not know everything about everything. If you are positioned well enough to learn, I think your life is sorted. I don't see anything as a setback."
Other initiatives that she also mentioned were, enabling curriculum autonomy for universities, allowing them to update syllabi in real-time, promoting adjunct faculty programs encouraging industry professionals to teach and mentor students and initiating the Gyan Programme which brought over 2,000 academicians from the Indian diaspora to teach in India with government support.
She also touched upon the challenges she faced while pioneering digital education as early as 2015.
She said, "People questioned the need for online courses back then. It was only when COVID hit that the entire country realized why we needed these systems in place. Vision sometimes feels premature, until it becomes a necessity."
(Reporting by Aaheli Chakraborty, Images by PR Team)
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