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Communications and Society Program
Meetings with Government Ministers
On February 5, 2007, immediately after the roundtable in Chennai, members of the roundtable met with three government ministers in New Delhi to formally present the group’s recommendations to them and hear their responses.
Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Vice Chairman of the Planning Commission of India, explained that the government is attempting to increase competition in education but noted that proposals for major changes in education will encounter strong opposition. He urged industry leaders to find the regions of the country that are most receptive to experimenting with new models and sponsor pilots that can demonstrate clear success. Dr. Alhuwalia also suggested that the roundtable’s recommendations be shared with the National Knowledge Commission, whose recent report also included proposals for improving education.
Shri Kapil Sibal, Minister for Science and Technology and Ocean Development, also encouraged the roundtable participants to focus initially on one state and demonstrate the new concepts there before attempting to expand them to the entire country. Minister Sibal expressed his enthusiasm for the power of geographic information systems (GIS), which he has described as “a revolutionary tool to change the lives of common people.” He noted that GIS can be used to excite students and engage them in new kinds of learning about their own communities.
Shri Kamal Nath, Minister for Commerce and Industry, noted that one of India’s greatest challenges is to bridge the urban/rural divide. Minister Nath expressed interest in the idea of the KLC and asked the Aspen Roundtable members to develop a more detailed model of its components and its functions. The dialogue led to an agreement that the model would focus on including KLCs in one to three SEZs. A more detailed description of the KLC project, is the first result of that further effort, appears in the appendix.
Ideally, these recommendations will be a small but important step in setting young Indians’ minds on fire to a lifetime of continuous learning, combining the best of new communications and information technologies with new pedagogy of Learning 2.0.