INAUGURAL SESSION WELCOME SPEECH BY SHRI I.D.N. SAHI
Secretary, Ministry, of Education,
Social Welfare and Culture
On behalf of the Ministry of Education and Social Welfare and myself, it is my proud privilege and pleasure to welcome you to this Thirty-sixth Meeting of the Central Advisory Board of Education.
The main purpose of this meeting is to consider the broad strategy to be adopted for the development of education' and culture in the Fifth Five-Year Plan and to advise the Government of India and the State Governments thereon. The preparations for this meeting, Mr. Chairman, began in March last when you directed that this meeting should be convened some time in September, 1972 and that the necessary preparations should be made in consultation with the State Govern- ments. We have been working on this, under your guidance, for the last six months. The result is the Working Paper on the programmes of educational development in the Fifth Five Year Plan which has been printed and circulated to the Members of the Board. We have not been equally successful as yet in preparing a Working Paper for the Programmes of cultural development. But a tentative first exercise has been made and has now been placed on the table. We hope to work upon it further in the light of the directives given by the Board.
Mr. Chairman, I should like to inform you and the members of the Board that I bad convened a Conference of Education Secretaries and Directors of Education on the 15th and 16th instant. They considered, not only the Working Paper on Educational Development, but even our tentative first exercise on programmes of cultural development. Copies of my address to the Conference as well as its recommendations are placed on the table for the information of the Board. I hope they will be of use in the Board's deliberations, I
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may briefly sum them up by saying that the Conference has fully endorsed the strategy proposed to be adopted for the development of education and culture in the Fifth Five-Year Plan and the major programmes which have been proposed for implementation. The Conference also went in some detail into the question of the administrative action necessary to plan and implement the large-scale programmes of educational and cultural development, which have now been proposed, and has made useful recommendations which I would commend for acceptance.
Mr. Chairman, we are meeting at a time when proposals for the Fifth Five-Year Plan are being formulated. I consider it our great good fortune that an eminent educationist of your stature and experience should be available to us to preside over the Board and to guide its deliberations at this important juncture. I have no doubt, Mr. Chairman, that we will all be greatly benefited by your insights into the educational problems of the country, by your vast experience of the field, and by your readiness and capacity to devise bold and imaginative programmes and to implement them with vigour. May I now request you, Sir, on behalf of the Members of the Board, all of us gathered here and myself to deliver the inaugural address for this Thirty-sixth Meeting of the Central Advisory Board of Education?