Life Long Learning through IT: Key to Development in Knowledge Economy
It has been recognized worldwide that creating, nurturing and developing knowledge-led economy and knowledge-based societies in all regions of the world is a key to survival, development, empowerment and prosperity of the people in the emerging knowledge era of the twenty first century and in the emerging context of globalization.

On one hand there exists a great potential in the societies to emerge as a knowledge-led economy in the context of their large but latent talent pool of young boys and girls, there exist challenges in leapfrogging from and transforming their predominantly agrarian or industrial economies into a new knowledge-led economy.

Such a transformation into a knowledge-led economy in particular and into knowledge society in general requires nurturing the following fundamental processes in the society on a large scale with wider and deeper participation of the people

• A continuous synthesis of new actionable knowledge

• An efficient and effective management of knowledge

• A quick dissemination of actionable knowledge across all sections and strata of the society and above all

• A continuous application of this knowledge for socio-economic development of the masses

These fundamental processes can be unleashed in the society on a wider scale by nurturing a culture of life-long learning among the masses in general and younger generation in particular.
Such a life-long learning culture among the people at large requires access to actionable knowledge resources

• To large number of people simultaneously

• At affordable costs

• With high quality of relevance and applicability for development

• At a faster-pace or in a just-in-time mode or in a on-demand manner

• With widest accessibility across all geographical regions, all sections of the society and all age-groups of population and

• In a mass-personalized manner

These six requirements can be simultaneously satisfied only by deploying Information Technology and enabling delivery of knowledge and education at all stages through IT.

There is no substitute to IT. Development and IT are thus two sides of the same coin.

A wider and deeper mass-movement of IT Literacy is thus a gateway to progress and prosperity of the people.

It is only through propagation of mass IT literacy that the precious fruits of IT, which are otherwise bringing unprecedented wealth to only few, can be really delivered to masses.

The severe threat of backwardness and marginalization of the masses emerging from the Digital Divide and Knowledge Divide can be effectively averted. An affordable and quick access to actionable knowledge for progress can be easily given to an IT Literate society.

Thus only an IT Literate society can enjoy a greater share of global business opportunities and global job opportunities.