Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’
Union Education Minister, Govt of India
[From today’s Education Times Supplement]
Reproducing a lovely article in today's Times of India, by the Union Education Minister on the need for having young authors and thought leaders.
The National Authors’ Mentorship Scheme for young, budding authors.
Here goes -
Writing is a craft that needs proper direction, polishing, and mentorship to channelise the inner restlessness.
Creating readership, and a conducive environment for promotion of a culture of reading in the society is surely an important responsibility of the society and the government.
Accessibility to books, reading materials, whether printed or in digital space, is thus a natural corollary to the idea of creating a society that reads, thinks, and takes innovative ideas forward.
It is worthwhile to mention that the society that reads requires new perspectives, new reading materials, and an ambience that embraces new ideas and new content.
In this context, the PM Mentorship Scheme for YUVA (Young, Upcoming and Versatile Authors) will go a long way in creating a generation of writers who can bring to the fore the national aspirations right before the reading masses in India and abroad.
Exploring the craft
Writing is an art, no doubt, but the art of writing is also a craft. It needs proper direction, polishing, and mentorship at the right time so that the inner restlessness of the prospective authors can get channelised in a productive manner.
As someone famously said that the best paradox about writing is that one is trying to use words to express something which those words cannot express themselves completely.
That is to say that writing is not only about arrangement of words and grammar, but it draws its sustenance from the emotional resources that go into the ideating of the theme or storyline.
The Scheme is not only about creating platform for young authors, but it is also about emphasising a significant role that they play in our socio-cultural and intellectual life.
A society that is willing to provide space and platform and even remunerative benefits in the form of scholarships and royalties to its content creators is surely the society that respects its cultural and literary heritage.
When a national body like National Book Trust, India (functioning under the Central Ministry of Education) would publish and promote the output of these 75 young authors, it will impact not only 75 but rather the whole stream of writers and thinkers in the times to come.
Space for writers
It goes without saying that a national authors’ Mentorship Scheme with its emphasis on providing space to the writers of all major Indian languages promises to provide valuable insights into the multi-lingual fabric of the country to the prospective writers - an insight that may take a much longer route to negotiate for an author belonging to a particular language.
The proper understanding and perspectives about the multilingual fabric of the country among young authors can provide them a much better understanding of the complex reality of India and the multi-dimensional angles that make up the cultural and literary heritage of the country.
In this context, it merges with the overall vision of National Education Policy, 2020, which has emphasised on the multilingualism as well as critical and creative thinking.
It is said that one can’t create a writer out of blank pages, but surely writers can be created out of bad pages.
There is no doubt that there are many among us, who have a desire to tell a story, whether it is related to oneself or to the society one lives in, or may be related to one’s past.
(The writer is Union Education Minister, Government of India)
The Link to the Contest HERE
