Hon. President of India, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, in his address to the nation on the eve of 60th independence day on 14th August 2006, talked about JEEVAN VIDYA:

Jeevan Vidya experience: Jeevan Vidya is being practiced by Prof Ganesh Bagaria, IIT, Kanpur, Prof Rajeev Sangal, Director IIIT (Hyderabad) and their teams. This scheme is concerned about addressing the basic causes of major problems of violence, corruption, exploitation, domination, terrorism and war. It has been found that violent and anti-social behaviour, unless dealt with care and with professionalism, could aggravate the extreme behaviour.

Jeevan Vidya develops tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty in human conduct by enabling self-knowledge that understands harmony in the self and in the entire existence. The academicians could bring about marked change even among the inmates of jails through the use of these techniques.

Jeevan Vidya is a 'teachable human value based skill' that can address inherent conflicts within the mind of the individual, within families, in organizations and in public life. Inner conflict is the very essence of violence. For example, with the skills imparted, it would be possible to reduce the overall period of secondary education from 25,000 hours of teaching to 20,000 hours, since the children become more responsible and productivity conscious. These experiments can be outreached to influence many people by developing networks using ICT through our educational system, that needs to pay increasing attention to this aspect of human development.

This process of imparting self-knowledge would promote a learning atmosphere, where this whole movement of inquiry into knowledge, into oneself, into the possibility of something beyond knowledge would bring about naturally a psychological revolution. From this comes inevitably a totally different order in human relationship and therefore society as a whole. The intelligent understanding of this process itself can bring about a profound change in the consciousness of mankind.

Read the full speech delivered by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam : Click here