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“To bridge the digital divide, we need collaboration among academia, industry, businesses, government, social organizations, and NGOs,” says Prof. Dr. Chattar Singh, Vice Chancellor, Rai Technology University, Bengaluru, in an Interview with Pratik Ghosh, Content Writer, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘New Normal – Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2023’ #ELSANewDelhi #ELSAGurugram How are you feeling to witness the New Normal Education Leadership Summit and Awards in Delhi? I’m coming here for the second time, first time it was held here itself and that was new normal because we’re coming out of covid at that time and this was the first summit where more than 50 Vice chancellors and head of the institutions participated in deliberations so it has been a big leap from that period to this period and more people are coming and joining in these summits and I must congratulate Chandan Anand and his team for this and this is time to celebrate because this has been a very successful conference today. The theme of this event is ‘India Vision 2030’. What do you think should be the vision for the education sector in India? The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 was envisaged to not only create a knowledge bank in India but also generate job opportunities for youth by developing new skills and fostering entrepreneurship. The policy aimed at various initiatives like Skill India to achieve self-reliance. While NEP 2020 outlines these goals, the implementation needs to be done in phases, focusing on education, research, innovation, entrepreneurship, jobs, and finance. We need to discuss and analyze these aspects to meet the goal of making India a “Vishwaguru” by 2030. With the rise of technology, there’s also a concern about the digital divide. How can we bridge this gap? To bridge the digital divide, we need collaboration among academia, industry, businesses, government, social organizations, and NGOs. It’s not just about urban and rural areas but also about affordability and access to advanced electronic devices. We need to innovate and research devices that are accessible to everyone, including students and those seeking knowledge and employment. The digital divide can hinder the goals of NEP 2020, so it’s crucial to ensure equal access. Any message for ArdorComm Media Group on its 2nd anniversary? ArdorComm Media has been doing a wonderful job from taking all the messages from government to people and from people to government. So, it is helping a lot in a positive manner not only to achieve the targets of NEP 2020 but also to aware the people particularly the youth, the teachers and the institutions about what is going on in the environment, in the society, in the country, in the government and vice versa. So, I congratulate ArdorComm Media for doing this job selflessly for promotion of education, research and workforce in India by its own means.

“We have implemented NEP in totality whether it’s the Academic Bank of Credits, multi-entry and multi-exit, four-year undergraduate programs, or the Indian knowledge system, every aspect of the NEP has been implemented in our university,” says Prof. (Dr.) Raghuvir Singh, Vice Chancellor, Teerthanker Mahaveer University, Moradabad, in an Interview with Pratik Ghosh, Content Writer, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘New Normal – Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2023’ #ELSANewDelhi #ELSAGurugram How are you feeling to witness the New Normal Education Leadership Summit and Awards in Delhi? I find this event to be wonderfully organized, with excellent speakers and relevant topics. The chosen topics are quite wide and pertinent to the current context. Everyone can learn from these discussions and take these insights back to their universities for the improvement of education. How are you implementing NEP in your university? We have implemented NEP in totality whether it’s the Academic Bank of Credits, multi-entry and multi-exit, four-year undergraduate programs, or the Indian knowledge system, every aspect of the NEP has been implemented in our university. We’ve been following these guidelines since the NEP was introduced by the Indian government. Our state government is also actively monitoring our progress, and we provide updates to them on our implementation. The theme of our event is “India Vision 2030.” What, according to you, should be the vision for the education sector going forward? In my opinion, universities should emphasize thinking skills over psychomotor skills. Teaching tools and techniques change rapidly, and universities can’t always keep up with these changes. Therefore, it’s crucial to focus on transferable skills, which are the fundamentals. Transferable skills enable students to learn job-specific skills on their own. Competency-building should be the primary focus to enable students to excel in their careers and social lives. How does this kind of forum benefit the education sector, where education leaders, industry experts, and government officials come together? This type of forum is an excellent way to bring together different stakeholders in the education ecosystem – regulators, education leaders, and industry experts. For years, these three entities have operated in isolation, and there have been limited platforms for them to interact and share their perspectives. Forums like this create a space for meaningful dialogue, allowing each group to understand the expectations and needs of the others, ultimately benefiting the education sector as a whole. Any message for the ArdorComm Media Group on its 2nd anniversary? Congratulations on completing two years! ArdorComm Media has done a wonderful job during this time. I hope you continue to flourish and contribute to the nation’s educational growth. Your efforts will undoubtedly help the nation progress towards becoming a developed nation.

“We had been Vishwa Guru, we have to be Vishwa Guru, and we will be Vishwa Guru,” says Kunwar Shekhar Vijendra, Chancellor, Shobhit University in an Interview with Pratik Ghosh, Content Writer, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘New Normal – Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2023’ #ELSANewDelhi #ELSAGurugram How are you feeling to witness the New Normal Education Leadership Summit and Awards in Delhi? It’s wonderful. I must congratulate the organization for the second anniversary as well. Very successful indeed. And this New Normal, actually, this term started during COVID. But today’s New Normal is that people should come together and collaboratively we should start doing a lot of things. And I am happy that Chandan and his team are doing a wonderful job. I was really impressed to see a very diversified audience of speakers, and especially meeting the Honourable Education Minister from Nagaland who is a celebrity on social media. Otherwise also, he’s trying to put Nagaland on the main map of education in the country. So, I congratulate everybody who is associated, and I wish this organization a lot of success. It’s good to see them in Delhi, looking forward to many more such opportunities. Kindly highlight some important initiatives which you are taking in Shobhit University. The main thing today, if we look at, is what is happening in the educational ecosystem in the country. As I was mentioning during my address also, the new education policy has come, and in the last three years, we are trying to reach to the last man. ‘Antyodaya’ the word I used and I’m using it again that up to the last man, education has to be there, holistic development of the youth has to be there, integration with the industry has to be there, and the skill sets have to be changed so that the industry and academy alliance is there. And this is all that in our university is happening, entrepreneurship, skill development, a lot of startups, research, innovation, what not. And I’m really happy that throughout the country, the same thing is happening again and again, and these platforms they gave us a reason to disseminate what is happening and to learn from our peers. According to you, what should be the vision of India for the education sector? The vision has already been set. We had been Vishwa Guru, we have to be Vishwa Guru, and we will be Vishwa Guru. Any message for ArdorComm Media? Keep up the same spirit. Do what you are doing. You are doing really good.

“There are a lot of industry-university interactions which are taking place in the learning process,” says Prof. (Dr.) Arun Garg, Vice Chancellor, MVN University, Palwal in an Interview with Pratik Ghosh, Content Writer, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘New Normal – Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2023’ #ELSANewDelhi #ELSAGurugram How are you feeling to witness the New Normal Education Leadership Summit and Awards in Delhi? It’s a very wonderful program which you have conducted and it’s all wonderful learning from different panellists and different speakers on how we can improve upon higher education, how we can adopt new technology, how we can interact or collaborate. These are the things which the new normal is about, and which are the different new skills. How we can upskill our teachers as well as upskill our students, and how we can make our students industry-oriented or globally placed professionals. What’s your take on the industry and academia outreaches which are taking place in your university? Any such initiative which is being taken in your university? Yeah, there are a lot of industry-university interactions which are taking place in the learning process. We have Bansal Classes who are themselves coming up and teaching the students with the updated skills which are required by IBM and Samsung. Then we have a few other industries, pharmaceutical industries. Recently, today only, we had an initial talk with Amrita Hospital for our physiotherapy and pharmacy classes. So, the thing which is very new to this area of pharmaceutical science is how to reduce the cost of medication to the patient and how to be more effective. There are a lot of medication errors and a lot of other things. So, we are going to work together with Amrita Hospital, which is going to be one of the biggest hospitals coming up in Faridabad. How important is skill development for students in this present situation? It is very important to have the skills in your respective domain, which is very important. Especially in case of computer science, the skills are being updated every five years or maybe three years. But in all other health sciences and other professions, you need to be updated with computer science, communication, and also the various platforms which are available for upskilling yourself. LinkedIn has several courses, Coursera has several courses. These courses are to be taken up by the students or maybe by working professionals for getting upskilled. As you can see in these kinds of forums where we bring in the education leaders, the ed-tech leaders, as well as the government, how does this kind of forum benefit the education sector? When we interact with all these learning platforms and other education players, we learn from each other. That’s what we discussed in this platform, Interactive learning. So, it’s a great platform for us to interact with the big players as well as with the small and come to know what is happening in this particular feature in the education industry here. So, it’s a great learning from this education summit.

“Today we are shifting from rote-based learning to actually experiential learning, which is more about deeper understanding, clearing the concepts, and processes of the students or the learners,” says Dr. R D Patidar, Vice Chancellor, OP Jindal University, Raigarh in an Interview with Pratik Ghosh, Content Writer, ArdorComm Media Group at the ‘New Normal – Education Leadership Summit & Awards 2023’ #ELSANewDelhi #ELSAGurugram How are you feeling to witness the New Normal Education Leadership Summit and Awards in Delhi? It’s good, really a good platform where all the academicians and industry leaders are here to share their knowledge and thoughts on the New Normal, especially the new National Education Policy. So, this is really a very good platform. How are you implementing technology in your University? We are implementing technology in many ways. OP Jindal University, Raigarh, is a university of Steel technology, and we are using technology for the teaching-learning process. We are using technology for all other activities of the university, and the ultimate purpose is to make the students industry-ready by designing industry curriculum and involving industry experts with the support of technology. What’s your take on skill development? Skill development is the most important part of today’s education, especially the new National Education Policy. They provide more flexibility and freedom, and also holistic development in education to develop the skills of the students, to make them talented, or we can say, to make them employable. So, today we are shifting from rote-based learning to actually experiential learning, which is more about deeper understanding, clearing the concepts, and processes of the students or the learners. So, that’s really very important. In these kinds of forums where we bring in education leaders, the EdTech players, as well as the government, how does this kind of forum benefit the education sector at large? Such kind of events are really very important for all the educational institutions in general, and the technical institutions or higher education institutions in particular, where we can interact with each other, share the issues, challenges, and it is the right platform to discuss the issues faced by various institutions and come to resolve them and provide quality education to the youth of the nation. Any message for ArdorComm Media Group on its 2nd anniversary? I congratulate ArdorComm Media and the entire team for such an excellent program organized in a very short span of time. I also congratulate ArdorComm Media for all their achievements despite being a young organization. So, I congratulate you and the entire team.