Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s monthly radio programme Man Ki Baat on April 30 completed 100th episode. The episode was broadcast live across the country and in the United Nations headquarters in New York.
“For me Man Ki Baat is like a Thaal of Prasad at the feet of god in the form of Janta Janardan, the people,” PM Modi said while addressing the citizens.
Mann ki Baat, started on October 3, 2014 as the government’s citizen-outreach programme. In in the last nine years it has raised hundreds of varied issues for making the country better, an official release said. “All these issues are based on deep and sound researches, feedback from various stakeholders and practitioners from the length and breadth of the country. It has impacted all sections of the society, who have been inspired to contribute towards fulfilling the great goals of the nation,” he release added.
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In the sixty-sixth episode of Mann Ki Baat, the Prime Minister gave a call to promote its traditional games and toys, and expressed his concern about the toy industry’s quality and the children’s health issues caused by cheap toys (made of plastic) pouring the market from unorganized sources.
In the previous episodes of June and July 2020, he talked about being Vocal for Local and discovering ways to be engaged at home during the national lockdown through traditional games. National Education Policy 2020 too emphasized upon the joyful learning. “These were taken into consideration by the Ministry of Education and within two years, through toy based pedagogy the message to promote Indian toys has reached every household,” the release said.
This gave space to the traditional toys in the school system, the release added. It further stated that the Education Ministry thus came up with National Curriculum Framework for Foundational stage and the Draft National Curriculum Framework for School Education. It also launched learning-teaching materials for Foundational stage, the Handbook of Toy based Pedagogy for all stages and subjects of school education.
In many of his episodes of Mann ki Baat, the Prime Minister narrated the tradition of practicing yoga for mental, physical and spiritual health from ancient times, and declaring June 21 as International Yoga Day on that day in 2015 at the UN General Assembly, made the academia think of various ways to make it a part of practice for all students of the country. The Ministry of Education proposed the National Yoga Olympiad for schools under different age groups and the NCERT has been organizing this three-day national event from 2016 onwards.
Furthermore, PM Modi has also raised concerns over mental health and well-being of people, specially children through Mann ki Baat emphasizing upon the stress, pressure of examination, peer and parental pressure on students. There have been several nation-wide digital educational programmes, specially during the COVID-19 period by the Government of India through several national educational institutes such as NCERT, CBSE, UGC, IGNOU and NIOS, among others, the release said.
Some of the initiatives taken up by the Ministry of Education and the NCERT have been studied by the faculty members, and a special issue of Indian Educational Review (IER), one of the journals of NCERT, April 2023 has been brought out highlighting the impact of ‘Mann Ki Baat’, having ten research papers, three in English, two each in Marathi, Gujarati and Kannada, and one is in Odia, the release added.
