Liberal education emerging as crucial 21st century component: Ex-ISRO chief

Liberal education is emerging as a crucial 21st century educational component, exploring the relationship among sciences and humanities, mathematics and art, and medicine and physics, according to former ISRO chief K Kasturirangan.

He said a comprehensive liberal education develops all capacities of human beings, intellectual, aesthetics, social, physical, emotional and moral, in an integrated manner.

"This is turn helps in developing critical thinking, improving communication skills and fostering aesthetic sensibilities," he said, adding in short, a liberal education will prepare one to be a thinking citizen for a lifetime.

Addressing students of TERI School of Advanced Studies at its 12th annual convocation on Thursday, Kasturirangan hailed the role of the Indian space program under Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in the last 50 years, saying "we can proudly claim about our capabilities as one of most versatile and sophisticated in nature anywhere in the world".

He said space data is deployed in India for many interesting applications, including periodic mapping of land use and land cover towards understanding the interactive processes between land, soil and water with implications to the productivity of the land.

He also spoke about developing strategies and policies regarding conservation and preservation of the Western Ghats.

Kasturirangan awarded 19 doctoral degrees and 229 master's degrees at the convocation. He was conferred the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, honoris causa, for his contribution in the ?eld of sustainability and education.

Meanwhile, a two-day international workshop on "Strengthening International Agribusiness Trade: Stakeholder Dialogue and Partnerships Towards SDGs", organised by TERI School of Advanced Studies, concluded on Friday.

The workshop was held to "prioritise action plan for strengthening international agribusiness trade from emerging countries to developed countries, and to initiate stakeholder dialogue and facilitate stakeholder partnerships between actors of food supply chains from developing and developed countries".