BENGALURU: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address on Monday on the occasion of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya’s centenary celebrations and the 125th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda’s address at the Chicago World Parliament of Religions got a poor response from city students.Universities and colleges in the city said they could not prepare for the speech as they got the communication from the University Grants Commission (UGC) late on Saturday evening. “We could not communicate to students properly as the university was closed on Sunday,” said a Bangalore University official.
On Monday morning BU authorities had made arrangements for students to listen to the PM’s speech at Senate Hall at Jnana Bharathi campus. “Hardly 250 students had gathered at the hall,” said official.
Interestingly, some of the students who did listen to the speech were unable to understand it as the entire speech was in Hindi. “It started at 11 am and I could not understand much as he spoke in Hindi,” said a post-graduate student in the Kannada department. “When the Prime Minister was addressing the nation, we expected at least a translation or the speech being in English. Most of us did not understand his Hindi,” said another student.
The students at government colleges missed the speech as no arrangements were made. But, some listened to it online through smart phones. Some private colleges in the city telecast the speech in their auditoriums. Visvesvaraya Technological University and Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences authorities did not make any arrangements to show the PM’s speech to their students.