MESSAGE OF THE PRESIDENT OF INDIA
 

I send my best wishes to the members of the Central Advisory Board of Education. The circumstances in which they are meeting this year are very different from those prevailing even a year ago. The events of the recent part have brought home to us, as never before, the vital need for achieving self-sufficiency at the earliest possible moment and thus reducing our dependence on others. In our future programmes of education, the training of the nation's youth will have to be geared to the new requirements of accelerated expansion both in agriculture and in industry, and even greater emphasis will have to be laid on the development of character and the inculcation of a spirit of discipline. At the same time I hope that adult education and particularly the eradication of illiteracy, which is regrettable so prevalent among our population, will receive special attention.

I have no doubt that all these considerations are already very much in the minds of the members of the Committee and I sure they will give them their most earnest thought.

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