Manmohan Singh at the awards ceremony organised by the Infosys Science Foundation in Mumbai on Thursday. (AFP)

Mumbai, Jan. 6: The New Year may have begun on a grim note with price rise and Telangana but Manmohan Singh feels it was “wise to be foolish” of him to return to India.

Not that it was a comeback without stellar achievements but the Prime Minister considers the Right to Education initiative “really special”.

Giving away the Infosys Science Foundation awards this evening, Singh took time off to tell the audience how he owes his education to scholarships and why Indians living abroad should come home.

The Prime Minister urged the intelligentsia living abroad to come back, saying sometimes it’s “wise to be foolish” and return.

Recalling his decision to quit his job with the UNCTAD in the 1960s for teaching at the Delhi School of Economics, Singh said that initially, Argentine economist Raul Prebisch had told him that it was “foolish” to quit a UN job. But later, the Argentinean acquaintance added that “sometimes in life, it is wise to be foolish”, Singh said.

Underscoring how scholarships played a key role in his education, Singh expressed concern about the rise of privately funded “for-profit education institutions” and praised the role of private scholarships in liberating creativity from economic and social handicaps.

“Feudal restrictions and pre-democratic institutions are no longer able to impose social barriers to the access to knowledge. If there is one barrier, and this too is an ancient one, it is the barrier of economic capacity. Indeed, with the growing share of privately funded for-profit educational institutions, this may be emerging as a worrisome barrier to freer access to knowledge for all our people,” Singh said.

“That is precisely why I greatly value scholarships and prizes that liberate creative minds from the constraints of economic and social handicaps. My own life stands testimony to the importance of scholarships. If I did not have access to scholarships, I would never have been able to complete my education, leave alone have the opportunity to be educated at some of the world’s best institutions,” Singh said, praising the role of the Infosys Science Foundation in generating funds required for rewarding excellence.

The foundation gives prizes for excellence in mathematical sciences, physical sciences, engineering and computer science, life sciences and social sciences.

Singh said the UPA government had taken several measures to increase funding for scholarships and awards to deserving students with emphasis on those from the Schedules Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, minorities and the girl child.

On a two-day visit to Mumbai beginning today, the Prime Minister said his government was committed to creating a wider talent and knowledge base to expand the resource pool. “If there is one initiative that our government has taken in these six and half years in office that I consider really special, it is this Right to Education that has now been enshrined in our Constitution,” Singh said.

Earlier in the day, he visited the strategic laboratory at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (Barc) in northeastern Mumbai and the radiochemistry lab there.

Tomorrow, he is scheduled to inaugurate Barc’s nuclear reprocessing facility at the Tarapur Atomic Power Station in Thane.