Prime Minister of India - Dr. Manmohan Singh

PM's scholarship scheme for Children's of Ex-Servicemen launched

"Today is a special day for all of us as it happens to be birthday of our first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. We celebrate this day as Children's Day. Because Panditji used to emphasise that nothing is more precious to us than the well being of our children. In this quest a great deal of effort has been made to improve the quality of life of our children. Educational facilities are being expanded, healthcare facilities are being expanded. It is also a fact that what we have been able to do is only a fraction of what needs to be done. And when we remember Panditji we recall the qualities of head and heart which he brought to bear on his duties to our country and on occasion like this it is befitting we should honour the children of those who have proved over the years to be the most patriotic citizens of our country i.e. the ex-servicemen.

This is the idea which came to me last year when I was looking at the accounts of the National Defence Fund, then I felt that in a small way we should make a humble contribution to promote the well being of the children of the ex-servicemen by creating this scholarship scheme. We could enable them to benefit from the opportunities that now exists in our country in terms of professional education whether they are management studies, engineering studies and variety of other disciplines that are now flourishing. And I am very happy that in a year's time we have to operationlise this scheme and nearly 5000 students will benefit from this scheme of which 4,000 will be from the armed forces and 1000 from the para-military forces including Railway Protection Force. This is a small recognition of the great contribution that our armed forces make to the protection of our liberties, to the safeguarding of our vital borders and our national interests.

More I look around, I often think that in our ex-servicemen we have 20 lakh people and these are the people who represent the best value system of our country. A few days ago I was looking at the human resource indicators of various states and I was struck by the fact that human resource indices of state like Himachal Pradesh compare favourably with many other states and I asked the question how is it that Himachal Pradesh can lead frog in the race for human resource development? The answer that I got was the presence of large number of ex-servicemen who though retire pretty early but when they retire they carry the message that education, healthcare facilities are essential for improving the quality of life. Therefore, this scholarship scheme is a small recognition of the great contribution that ex-servicemen including our para-military forces make to the protection of life and liberties of our citizens. I am very happy that we have been able to operationlise this scheme and that it is going to benefit a very substantial segment of young population in our country. I am particularly happy that a fair proportion of children happened to be women. I think that is how it should be, no nation can progress if women do not feel to be active partners in the processes of development and change, that must apply to all processes which have a bearing on the future of our country. The education happens to be the most important of them. I therefore congratulate all those who have been connected in operationlisation of the scheme and I wish all these children Godspeed. May God bless all of you."