By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR:On the occasion of the holy ‘Guru Diwas’, MP and former Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan laid the foundation stone of the RIC (Residential Internship and Skill Hub for Industry) building at the Odisha State Open University (OSOU) campus in Sambalpur. On the occasion, he launched a new age-appropriate course “Self-Health Care and Wellness” for the youth and “AI Tools for Collaborative Learning” for enhancing the skills of teachers.
Addressing the gathering, Shri Pradhan said that today the biggest challenge in our education system is to bridge the gap between ‘degree and employability’. We have to get rid of the delusional mentality that has been prevalent since the British rule that ‘degree is everything’. Not just bookish knowledge, but practical learning and practical skills can make the youth competent and employable. Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Performance for All Challenge and the new National Education Policy have given top priority to education along with skills. In the ‘RICE’ project, the foundation stone of which was laid today, students can become self-reliant by getting practical training as per the requirements of the industrial world.
The current unstable situation in the world and the disruption of global supply chains have affected employment in India. Keeping this in mind, the Prime Minister has called upon the youth to become job creators. There are about 1 crore young people in Odisha, which is a quarter of the state’s population, who are the ‘Amrit Generation’ of the 21st century. The future of Odisha for the next 100 years lies on the shoulders of this generation. Today’s youth can earn a PhD at the age of 23. The ‘Risi’ project will act as a bridge to make this Amrit Generation efficient and self-reliant.
Shri Pradhan said that in the present times, cybercrime and artificial intelligence have created new challenges for us. To bridge the performance gap between machines and humans, we have to be innovative. Just as poet Bhimbhoi’s poetry showed the world the way to survive, similarly, the development of society is possible only with our knowledge and practical skills.
The Odisha State Open University, established in Sambalpur in 2015, was going through a very difficult situation for the first 8 years. It was abandoned after only building a building. But after this was noticed, Rs 20 crore was provided for the development of the university’s infrastructure through the PM USHA scheme of the central government. The university, which started with zero admissions, has now reached 40,000 students.
Shri Pradhan announced that Sambalpur district will be developed as a skill testing ground. Rural youth who are unable to go to school or college will be given short-term useful courses through Odisha State Open University, which will increase their monthly earning capacity. In the next few years, an audio-visual lab will be established and about 1250 trained content creators and influencers will be created. He said that these trained youth will give a new identity to the world by bringing the culture, lifestyle, tradition, natural beauty, temples and rural economy of their villages to the world through social media.
