Give social touch to your future plans: Smriti Irani tells students

Raipur: Stating that real education should contribute towards nation-building, Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani on Monday urged the students to give a social touch to their future financial plans and also learn to take failures in stride.

"The way people draft their plan, it reflects their character. I have been to so many institutions, where I found students saying that they are making efforts to get placed in MNCs. Students of management institutions aspire for financial services...But I am of the opinion that our financial plans should be complemented with societal plans," Irani, who was the chief guest at the fifth convocation ceremony of Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Raipur, said.

"True education must provide life-building, man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas. Real education is that which contributes to nation-building and enables one to stand on one's own legs. IIMs definitely contribute here by being job providers for their own students and many thousands of their countrymen," she said.

These students as IIM Graduates can touch the lives of thousands of others and help in imbibing in them the essence of the learning they had here, she added.

"Whenever we embark on a new journey in life, we know very little about what is going to follow. In such situations, don't allow any kind of fear to overpower you, just follow your heart.

"The nation is looking up to you for running and establishing organisations that will earn respect and admiration for their global standards. Failure is inevitable at some or the other part of life, but not taking a risk can be the biggest failure in life. If one learns to celebrate the learning that comes from both success and failure, then one will be more often successful in life," she added.

Appreciating Chhattisgarh government's management skill in Public Distribution System (PDS) and Power sector, she asserted that the IIM Raipur students should do case studies on how Chhattisgarh has been able to minimise its energy losses and revamp their PDS.

Chief Minister Raman Singh emphasised that management institutes have a lot to teach and one can learn and apply these learning for capacity-building and betterment of the society.

As many as 140 students were conferred degrees in the convocation ceremony and four awarded gold medals.