The Indira Gandhi National Open University (Hindi: इंदिरा गाँधी राष्ट्रीय मुक्त विश्वविद्यालय), known as IGNOU, is a distance learning national university located in IGNOU road, Maidan Garhi, New Delhi, India. Named after former Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi, the university was established in 1985 with a budget of 2000 crore, when the Parliament of India passed the Indira Gandhi National Open University Act, 1985 (IGNOU Act 1985). IGNOU is run by the central government of India.
IGNOU, the largest university in the world with 3,500,000 students, was founded to impart education by means of distance and open education, provide higher education opportunities particularly to the disadvantaged segments of society, encourage, coordinate and set standards for distance and open education in India and strengthen the human resources of India through education. Apart from teaching and research, extension and training form the mainstay of its academic activities. It also acts as a national resource centre, and serves to promote and maintain standards of distance education in India. IGNOU hosts the Secretariats of the SAARC Consortium on Open and Distance Learning (SACODiL) and the Global Mega Universities Network (GMUNET) initially supported by UNESCO.
IGNOU has started a decentralisation process by setting up five zones, viz, north, south, east, west and north east. The first of the regional headquarters, catering to four southern states, Pondicherry, Andaman and Nicobar and Lakshadweep, is being set up in the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala.
Read more about Indira Gandhi National Open University: History, Schools, Divisions, Research Unit, Institutes, Cells, Centers, and Consortia, Accreditation & Recognition, Convocations in The Past, EGyanKosh, Silver Jubilee Celebrations, Pan Commonwealth Forum 6 : Kochi, Indo-Africa Virtual University
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“You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”
—Indira Gandhi (1917–1984)
“Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men’s language. Of course women learn it. We’re not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man’s world, so it talks a man’s language.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)
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—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
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Pawnbroker: Sure they are. It’s Yom Kippur.
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—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
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—Victor Null, South African educator, psychologist. Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure, introduction, Yale University Press (1988)