On Mahalaya, October 3 2005, the University of Calcutta (CU) Asutosh Siksha Prangan at College Street was expectant,- not really for the divine family of Devi Durga to pay their annual visit to the earth. It was time for tele-conference with the Indian President, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. He inaugurated the 'Virtual University' programme, on the occasion of the hundred and fifty years celebrations of the Universities of Calcutta, Madras and Mumbai, the three oldest of the modern Indian universities. These hubs of higher education got connected with each other through the Tele-Education Delivery System via EDUSAT from the Rashtrapati Bhavan Multimedia Studio at New Delhi, with technical support from BSNL, IGNOU, ISRO, MTNL, among others. Apart from the students and members of staff of these three universities, representatives of the Anna University, the Indira Gandhi National Open University and the Madurai Kamaraj University also participated in the conference.
Announcing his mission to make India a developed country by 2020, Dr. Kalam emphasised on the implementation of the 'Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas' (PURA) programme, which includes physical, economic, electronic, knowledge and spiritual connectivity. The three Indian colleges to pursue the PURA programme will be Faqirchand College, West Bengal; Sonepat Arts, Science and Commerce College, Maharashtra and Vedachallam Government Arts College, Tamil Nadu. He also envisaged the formation of a knowledge grid for high-speed connection among academic and research institutions, research and development organisations and related industries, and set round-the-clock interonnectivity as one of the key guidelines for a model virtual university. Establishing a link between economic growth and societal transformation, he stressed on the development of knowledge economy. Development of a youth satellite system is among India's goals, he said. He also asked for the creation of two global youth resource cadres - one with special knowledge skills and another with higher education.
The participants from CU in the students' interaction session with the President were Mili Das(Pharmaceutical and Fine Chemical Technolgy), Bhaswati Bhattacharya(Bioinformatics), Arunava Roy(Biotechnology), Pradipta Kundu(Biotechnology), Kunal Chatterjee(Microbiology). Five students each from the Universities of Madras and Mumbai also participated in the question-answer session with the President. The issues covered were herbal medicines to biodegradable products; food distribution system, research as a career option to success of Indian professionals abroad UN Human Development Report, to Mumbai floods; future of Indian women and role of remote villages in politics to right to education bill; role of tele-education in helping teachers to educational website for the visually challenged; cost-effectiveness of tele-education to importance of education. Answering to one of the questions, Dr. Kalam said that tele-education cannot eradicate illiteracy, but individual efforts by educated people to teach illiterate people can make India score high in literacy in no time.
CU Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Asis Kumar Banerjee in his short address to the President and the other participating universities, announced that the first batch of students from the Universities of Madras and Mumbai would visit CU soon, followed by frequent visits of such other batches.
It was truly a red-letter day for all concerned, as pointed out by the University of Madras Vice-Chancellor, Prof. S.P. Thyagrajan, as Vijay Khole, the University of Mumbai Vice-Chancellor highlighted the fact that the universities are on the path to share each other's infrastructure for empowering India with expansion and extension of education.
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