Saturday, August 27 2005 15:15 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: President A P J Abdul Kalam today (Aug 27,2005) advocated establishment of 'village knowledge centres', which would become helpdesks, confidence builders and e-governance nodal points for empowering villagers.

"India has approximately 2.3 lakh village panchayats. I visualise establishment of village knowledge centers in these Panchayats to empower villagers with knowledge and to act as a nodal centre for knowledge connectivity," he said, adding that creating these centres should become the focus on the Rural Development Ministry.

Inaugurating the 11th Delhi Book Fair, Kalam said through such centres requirements of books will increase continuously, reading habits would multiply and employment potential would be generated for library management.

"These Centres would be equipped with 1000 books of different subjects, have a computer terminal, telephone connection, modem, printer and other support facilities for functioning as digital library", he said.

These centres could be used for collection, digital storage and dissemination of village specfic information pertaining to agriculture, traditional medicines, and folklore.

Citing the example of mobile lending library in Chandigarh and Virudhnagar, he said there was a need to expand these models to other villages.