Kerala Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar on Tuesday underscored the importance of mother tongue in education, saying the Centre’s National Education Policy gives due weight to learning native languages.Speaking after releasing a biography of India’s first Railway Minister, John Matthai, Arlekar recalled Matthai’s contributions as an educationist and economist, according to a statement issued by the Lok Bhavan.The governor described Matthai-also a former union finance minister and former vice-chancellor of the University of Kerala-as a man of “great honesty and integrity,” the statement said.In his address, Arlekar also noted that the contributions of several Kerala-born academics, including V P Menon, have not been sufficiently acknowledged in the country’s post-independence history.The biography, titled Honest John and authored by Bakhtiar K Dadabhoy, was released at a function jointly organised by the Universities of Calicut and Kerala at the Lok Bhavan.On the occasion, six new Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) developed by the Electronic Media and Mass Communication Research Centre (EMMRC) of the University of Calicut were also launched.“These programmes aim to expand access to quality higher education through flexible, technology-enabled learning and to ensure that more research papers and documents by Indian students are available online in open-access format,” the statement said.“The One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) scheme of the central government provides access to thousands of journals and research papers for students, faculty and researchers across higher-education institutions in the country,” it added.Besides Dadabhoy, Calicut University Vice-Chancellor Dr P Raveendran, Kerala University Vice-Chancellor Dr Mohanan Kunnummal, and Vivek Matthai, grandson of John Matthai, were present, it said. PTI
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