Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi has urged vice-chancellors of all universities to involve students in implementing the “University Social Responsibility” scheme.

She was inaugurating a two-day South Zone Vice-Chancellors’ Meet organised jointly by the Pondicherry University and the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) here.

She said there should be “balancing of rights and responsibilities”.

Ms. Bedi said 36 million students spread across nearly 1,000 universities could be engaged for building a prosperous India.

“Every student should be involved in implementing the University Social Responsibility which would go a long way in ensuring clean India (Swachh Bharat), promotion of green environment and upkeep of law and order,” she said.

Need for will

Asserting that there should be strong will power on the part of the students. she said that “where there is a will there would be the way”.

She said that the universities might have paucity of funds. But they should build on what they have so that there would be better development and improvement in the performance of the academic responsibilities of the educational institutions, as no institution was absolutely full of resources in India, she said and added that the universities and their administrators should concentrate on promoting the concept of “art of living”.

She said that she was always a learner and had an avid interest in teaching profession and recalled the reforms she had introduced in Tihar jail in Delhi and improved the standard of literacy of prisoners.

“It all depends on how strong is your will and how determined you are in implementing reforms” she said and called upon Vice-Chancellors to function as “reformers, transformers and performers”.

Vice-chancellors had the responsibility to shape the students to face the future challenges, she said.

AIU president Sandeep Sancheti said that the agenda for the two-day conference of the Vice-Chancellors was involvement of technology in higher education for building knowledge society.

He said that technology was a “facilitator and transformer” in the current context of development.

Mr. Sancheti said that the universities could share resources by promoting virtual labs and classrooms and technology had the power to change the world order.

Vice-Chancellor of Pondicherry University Gurmeet Singh and Secretary-General of AIU Furqan Qamar spoke.