Mukul Kanitkar,
Secretary, Vivekananda International Foundation
Value based education is a system that will not only lead us to discovering good profession, it will also instil in us a sense of purpose
Education is the vehicle of knowledge, self-preservation and success. Education not only gives us a platform to succeed, it also provides us with qualities like strength, character and self respect. The greatest gift education gives us is the knowledge of unconditional love and a set of values.
These values include the simple difference between right and wrong, a belief in God, the importance of hard work and self respect. Education is a continuous learning experience; we learn from people, we learn from success and failures, we learn from leaders and followers, and we manage to grow up to be the person we are meant to be.
The Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) is a New Delhi-based think tank set up with the collaborative efforts of India’s leading security experts, diplomats, industrialists and philanthropists under the aegis of the Vivekananda Kendra.
VIF strives to bring together the best minds in India to ideate on key national and international issues; promote initiatives that further the cause of peace and global harmony; monitor social, economic and political trends that have a bearing on India’s unity and integrity; analyse the causes for social and ethnic conflicts leading to extremism and offer policy alternatives; interact with civil society and offer institutional support for exchange of ideas and interaction among conflicting groups; critique public policy and the working of democratic institutions and constitutional bodies; and evolve benchmarks for good governance and efficiency in public institutions.
These are objectives that fall under a broad head called `nation-building’ and often come within the purview of universities and institutions of higher learning. Unfortunately, for reasons best known to those who manage them, these academic bodies have not been able to attend to these tasks. This neglect, it seems, is in some way responsible for the perceived failure of representative bodies and the prevailing inefficiency in the government sector.
