Rajya Sabha Member and former Union Minister Karan Singh has said that a value orientation was missing in the current education system as a consequence of constant neglect of the great thoughts in every religious system practised in India and those that represented a wholesome philosophy.
“Science is a blessing but one should have the wisdom to use it. And we are entering a world with endless possibilities, overcome by the ‘tsunami’ of information. There is need for the information to be distilled into knowledge. The importance of knowledge is deeply embedded in the Indian psyche,” he said, in his address at the 4th convocation of the BITS Pilani, Hyderabad campus on Sunday, when 748 students received their degrees.
Mr. Singh prescribed the 4 L’s in his message - Learning to know (Being a Gnana ‘Yogi’), learning to do (Karma Yogi), Learning a life together and Learning to be, to develop to the fullest consciousness. Being a Gnana Yogi he said, was accepting that learning was a continuous, life-long process and one for which age did not matter. Being a Karma Yogi was developing a creative attitude and together building a great resurgent India.
Learning to live together involved transmission of five values he told students - of family, of society, of inter-faith, of the environment and overall living like a large family. All this was part of learning to be a ‘Vasudaika Kutumbam’, Mr. Singh explained to graduating students at what he described was among the finest educational institutions in the private sector. Admitting that while Government institutions were doing their job, the private industry was needed to expand on a massive scale in the education sector.
Earlier, presenting his report, Director and senior Professor Vajja Sambasiva Rao spoke of initiatives taken by the BITS Pilani - Hyderabad campus and how students here were involved in 72 ongoing projects, with 58 more completed.
Prof. Bharat Bhushan, an Ohio Eminent Scholar with research in fundamental studies in inter-disciplinary areas of nano technology and Manoj Saxena, who oversees investment and growth in the Cognitive and Cloud Computing space, as a founding General Partner of The Entrepreneurs’Fund IV, received the Distinguished Alumnus Awards for 2015.
Anupriya Gagneja, Pratyush Mahapatra and Shyam Krishna Shenoy A received the gold, silver and bronze medals, respectively for first degree programmes.
