'Knowledge centres for rural growth'

President A P J Abdul Kalam today said the concept of creating village knowledge centre (VKC) was essential for the rural transformation and to become a developed nation by 2020.

"VKC is one of the essential components for realising our goal of graduating into a knowledge society and lead to the transformation of the nation into a developed country before 2020," Kalam said while inaugurating the convocation of National virtual academy for rural transformation.

He, however, emphasised that focus of these VKCs should be on creation of employment opportunities without which the knowledge centres would become ineffective.National alliance headed by Dr M S Swaminathan, and its partners like Nasscom have planned to connect 25,000 villages as VKCs.

"I am sure that ultimately the National alliance will be able to develop a user owned and managed network which will help the rural population in terms of information," Kalam said.