BENGALURU: Six students from two city schools participated in an interaction with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday at Manekshaw Auditorium in New Delhi. Students from all over the country got a chance to ask the PM questions at this interaction.
Out of six from the city, one boy from Little Flower Public School, Hosakerehalli, was the only to be selected for the interactions, while the five girl students from New Horizon Public School, Indiranagar, were allowed to participate in the programme as audience as they had met the PM during the Parliament session to explain about a mobile application they had developed on waste management.
When he got his turn to ask question, Atmik Ajoy, a Class 10 student, asked, “Nowadays, a majority of the youths are not showing interest in taking up teaching as a profession. When this is the situation, how will you give us teachers like Dr Sarvapalli Radakrishna that we expect?”
Narendra Modi told him, “There are teachers in all professions. Those who have expertise in their profession are teachers. The need of the day is one-on-one teaching.”
After the programme, the PM spoke to Atmik and asked about his health condition as Atmik suffers from kidney-related problems.
Speaking to Express, Dr Gayatri Devi, principal of the school, said, “Following the instructions from the state Department of Public Instructions (DPI) we had sent Atmik’s name from our school. The DPI sent it to MHRD and he was selected.”
“There were some guidelines for us to follow while sending student names. For example, the student should be active in inter-school competitions at district and state levels. He/she should also be excellent in academics,” said Padmavati, Deputy Director Public Instructions (DDPI) Bengaluru South.
Even the question asked by students was finalised by officials at Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD).
Power Trouble
A majority of the city schools arranged for the live telecast of the PM’s interaction with students at their schools, but the powercut came as a nuisance.
Some of the schools were able to watch 30 minutes of the programme, out of the 90 minutes, while the rest just watched the first 15 minutes.
“Though we had back-up, it was not sufficient as we had arranged the telecast on LCD monitors which need more power supply. So, we were able to show just the first 15 minutes,” said the principal of one of the city-based schools.