President Ram Nath Kovind today said Mizoram is a truly modern state, ready to take off for higher achievements, having achieved the second-highest literacy level in the country.

The President was addressing the 16th convocation of the Mizoram University at Aizawl.

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The President said that Mizoram is blessed with natural resources in abundance. A region that is rich in bio-diversity offers vast opportunities for research and development. “However, it is our responsibility to strike the right balance between development and sustainability,” he said.

The environment in this State as well as the other North-Eastern States needs to be preserved with care, he said. “We must adopt practices which are beneficial not only to us but also to nature,” the President.

He praised the people of Mizoram, Sikkim, and Tripura for generating the least plastic waste as per a study by Niti Aayog. He said that this is a good example of responsible consumption and production.

He noted that despite busy traffic, people of Aizawl refrain from honking. This practice is worth appreciating and may be adopted by people in other cities too.

The President said that according to progress on Goal No 4 of UN Sustainable Development Goals, which pertains to providing Quality Education, Niti Aayog’s SDG India Index 2020-21 shows that Mizoram with a score of 60 performed better than the national average of 57.

An interesting point that figured in the analysis was that the score for Goal-4 ranked Aizawl as the top performer among all districts of the north-eastern states.

Kovind urged the people of Aizawl to handhold and encourage the people in the other districts of the state to improve their social indices and participate in the process of national development.

The President said that educational institutions are incubators of the future. They not only provide training and education to students but also mould them into good citizens. It is the unrelenting support of the teachers at the educational institutions and universities that plays the most prominent role in the lives of the students.