Every citizen should be knowledge empowered

BANGALORE: The Karnataka Knowledge Commission (KKC) formed under the chairmanship of noted scientist Dr K Kasturirangan, three years ago, is now at the threshold, making every citizen, knowledge empowered.Express spoke to Prof M K Sridhar, Member Secretary and the Executive Director of the KKC on the occasion of Commission completing its term on September 30.According to Prof Sridhar, the Commission did not have any established rules when it was formed in September 2008.“We had to search our route. But we did not know where to start. All we could figure out was there was lot of expectations from us.At this time, the Karnataka State Planning Board brought out the Karnataka Vision Document and we took it as basis.We began working in that directions and started making recommendations based on this document,” he explained.Prof Sridhar recalled how they gradually picked up the experiences, ideas from various stakeholders to bring a clear vision.The Commissioner started working towards knowledge society framework.“We visualised every citizen to be empowered with knowledge.Knowledge merely does not mean literacy,” he said.The Commission is seeing a centralised creation, dissemination and application of knowledge.He explained that the Commission is working on community knowledge centres, where services are offered by government agencies like public library, primary health centres etc.Prof Sridhar tells that knowledge society cannot be build in a stipulated time.But he said that Commission is more clear in building Karnataka into a knowledge hub.