Education key to strengthen struggle: Tibetan PM

Less than three percent of the educated Tibetans in exile can fulfil the aspirations of rest of the population in the country, Tibetan Prime Minister-in-exile Lobsang Sangay said here.

"Education is the key to sustaining and strengthening the Tibetan struggle," Sangay said Saturday while addressing a workshop of primary school teachers.

He said it was only through education that 2.5 percent of Tibetans in exile could represent and fulfil the aspirations of the 97.5 percent of the Tibetan population.

The 44-year-old Harvard educated minister said: "Education is our priority and I continue to devote 25 to 30 percent of my time towards enhancing the education system."

He said: "The job of a teacher is of Himalayan proportion. However, a Tibetan teacher has a special and additional responsibility, as they are teaching not just for a career but for a cause."

More than 50 years after India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru took the initiative to open schools for Tibetan refugees, the Tibetan administration in exile is now managing over 71 institutions functioning across the country.

The schools were set up after the first Tibetan refugees came to India in 1959. They are being run by the Central Tibetan Schools Administration, an autonomous body under government of India's human resource development ministry.