I next take up the question of agriculture. We have already decided to have junior agricultural schools and, in my opinion, as many secondary schools as possible should have an agricultural bias. After all 80 per cent of our people live in villages, 80 per cent of our people are farmers; our biggest industry in India is agriculture 2nd we have neglected agriculture. It is no use teaching our boys

theoretical agriculture. We must teach them to be practical farmers. I have known farmers telling me `what is the use of teaching our boys? They leave the farms for a white-collared Job". Now that should not be the objective of education to take the best away from the farms. The objective of education must be to keep the boys and girls on the farms but with greater knowledge of what modern farming is and that is why we have the scheme of junior agriculture tural schools and giving an agricultural bias to education in our secondary schools.

Then I come to the question of science. Now again I attach the greatest importance to science in our country. The late Prime Minis- ter-I call him "The father of science in this country" had the far- sightedness, the wisdom, the statemenship to realise that this country cannot go far, cannot become modern unless tremendous emphasis was placed on science. Today if we have about 27 first-class labora- tories, in this country and other scientific institutions, they are largely due to his initiative, his vision and his imagination.

Science, apart from other virtues, has a fundamental value in this country. If we are going to become modern, if we have to fight the many prejudices, superstitions and inhibitions, we must become scientifically minded. And, therefore, from that point of view, I attach the greatest importance to teaching of science in our country and we should start science from the earliest classes. Now, if you ask me the question as to how the U.S.S.R. in a short period of 20 or 30 years has become the leading technological country in the world-it is the first, the United States is certainly the second-how did it happen? Russia was as backward as we were, and how this happened? My answer is-there can be other answers, we cannot give one answer to a complicated question like this-because Russia attached the greatest importance to science and Russia started teaching science to her students from the primary stage, going on to secondary schools and then going on to scientific institutions, and this is what we have got to do. In the primary schools we have to teach our students to observe nature. You do not need laboratories for observing nature. I think we as a nation are not observant. We think of ourselves. Now the time has come when we have to see what is happening outside ourselves. We must start teaching science from the earlier stages and in this Board may I point out that we have a very important Science Department in the N.C.E.R.T. and we are advising the State Governments to have Science Departments. Many of the States have established such departments and I hope the others will also follow suit. One difficulty about science study is the procurement of scientific equipment. We are tackling this problem also. We have set up a workshop in the N.C.E.R.T which is producing prototype equipment for science laboratories and very soon we will have all the equipment that we need for our laboratories in the primary and secondary schools and we need not import anything at all. The other problem is the provision of science teachers. We have not enough science teachers and for that purpose also we have just decided that our regional colleges will train science teachers in a much larger way so that we can meet this shortfall. Then there is the question of syllabus for science students. Science is progressing so fast that we are still 50 years behind the modern countries. We are still teaching science which the modern

countries gave up some time ago and, therefore, in order to keep abreast with scientific advancement, you have to go on changing your syllabus from time to time so that modern scientific knowledge is given to our students. For this purpose also we are holding seminars to which teachers from secondary schools are invited. These are organised by the U.G.C. in collaboration with N.C.E.R.T. and with the help of US A.I.D. and these have been a great success and we want to increase the number of these seminars.

Now, just one word about primary schools. My one appeal to, all State Education Ministers is that-I think I also made this appeal to Education Ministers last time-no sub-standard primary schools should be started. Schools must conform to certain standards. It is much better not to give, education than to start a sub-standard school which is no help at all. Certain basic amenities and facilities should be there. The other thing is about imbalances to which I also referred at the last Education Ministers' Conference. Imbalance bet- ween State and State, imbalance, between regions in a State, imbalance between boys' and girls education. All these should be removed. We have to go forward as a nation. You cannot afford to have a part of the nation educated and the other part uneducated you cannot afford to have the boys educated and the girls uneducated.

I might make a mention of the question of salaries of teachers, This is a perennial question, and we have discussed it from time to time. We took a decision last time that teachers' salaries should be raised. We also took a decision that the salaries of teachers should not form part of the plan but should be outside the plan. We will discuss it in greater detail when we come to our business in the session.

The next question is the preservation of the facilities which we possess. Our facilities are few but we do not conserve them. For instance, in the realm of higher education, we have taken a decision in Delhi that we will not build new colleges but will make use of existing colleges, stagger the hours of studies, and have two shifts instead of one. I think the only point is that instead of putting up a new building which costs a lot of money, we should make use of the colleges which already exist so that the facilities in the same building, in the same laboratory, in the same library may be used to teach double the number of students with very little cost. This also applies to collaboration between universities and laboratories. I have a scheme whereby the N.P.L. in Delhi and the Physics Department of Delhi University will collaborate in the use of equipment and so on. This should be done on a much larger scale. Similarly, there should be more collaboration between industries, universities and laboratories. We must persuade industry to play its role in research and education. I am afraid industry as not played the role it should have. We should not clamour for more universities. It has become a prestige issue. If one State has eight universities, why another State should have less universities. It is much better to have university centres where you have a complex of Colleges instead of having the whole paraphernelia of a new university, vicechancellor, a rector, etc.

I may now come to our rural institutes. I need hardly say that in a country which attaches so much importance to agriculture, our rural institutes should have more attention from us and greater consideration. Recently, we have adopted a scheme whereby there will be three zones into which the rural institutes Will be divided and each zone will be a deemed university so that we will be raising the status of the rural institutes. The matter is now pending before the University Grants Commission and I hope a decision will no, longer be delayed.

With regard to scholarships, we have today 29,000 national grant and loan scholarships. This is too small for a large country like India and I hope in the Fourth Five-Year Plan we will have at least 70,000 scholarships. We believe in socialism. We believe in socialistic approach to society and social problems. To my mind the first function of socialism is to give the same opportunity to a poor boy and girl for higher education as a rich boy or girl gets. And that can only be done by giving large number of scholarships or loan scholarships 10 students and I hope we will be able to elaborate and improve our programme of national scholarships.

Finally, a word about the plan. I do not want to go into any details now. Very soon the Education Ministers will meet in Delhi to determine finally what should be allotted to the Central sector and what should belong to the State sector and my appeal to the State Education Ministers is that when you meet very soon in Delhi to decide the proportion of amounts to be given to the Central sector and the amounts to be given to the state sector, please remember this that if we are pressing for for certain allocation, it is not because we, want to deprive the States of the power but we are thinking of the issue as a whole, we are thinking of national priorities, we are thinking of what the nation needs as far as education is concerned.

Thank you.