New Delhi: Asserting for a three-pronged strategy to make education more attractive, President A P J Abdul Kalam today (Nov 30, 2004) said the large mismatch between the skills required for the modern economy and the education imparted to the students was leading to more educated unemployed.

"...Our employment generation system is not in a position to absorb the graduates passing out from the universities leading to increase in educated unemployed, year after year," he said during an interaction with the course participants of National Defence College.

There was a large mismatch between the skills required for the modern economy and the education imparted to most of the students. In addition, economic growth and investments have not kept pace with the availability of human resources, the President said.

"This situation will lead to instability in the social structure. We need higher education focused on and oriented towards high value and productive employment opportunities," he said and added that a three-pronged strategy was needed to make education more attractive.

"Firstly, the educational system should highlight the importance of entrepreneurship and prepare the students right from the college education; the banking sector should provide venture capital right from every village level to the prospective entrepreneurs and finally there has to be an economic pull for human resources," he said and added this would also help in upliftment of nearly 260 million people living below poverty line.

The President asserted that the nation had a major challenge for upliftment of people living below poverty line and listed out a 10-point profile of developed India which includes thin divide between rural and urban India.

The other points listed by him included equitable distribution of energy and quality water, strong agricultural sector, non-discrimination of education on the societal basis or economic basis besides others.

Kalam also talked about the new digital economy and the information era and said the Defence doctrines do not merely work towards protecting the physical boundaries of the nation. "They work towards protecting the knowledge capital as well."

He said in the changed scenario, the role of military would be that of a knowledge soldier protecting "our information network and information infrastructure."