What is Universalisation of Excellence (UOE)?

When my avant-garde article. "Universalisation of Excellence: The Varied Dimensions" was published in University News of November, 2021, many of my friends were convinced about its importance, but they felt that it was not sufficient for students to comprehend. They wanted a narrative in a more popular language. I looked into Google but found no reference to UOE. Dictionary meanings of the two words individually are clear, but their total meaning apparently is not. Universalisation is involving all people in the world or in a particular group. Excellence is to be extremely good, outstanding. Thus to understand UOE, one has to understand thoroughly the basic concept and varied usage of excellence.

What is great people's excellence?

Abraham Lincoln once said, "I do the very best I know how, the very best I can, and I mean to keep on doing so until the end." Winston Churchill declared, "I am a man of simple tastes, easily satisfied with the best." Martin Luther King Jr says beautifully thus: "If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets as Michaelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry".

Why excellence?

Because we are looking for success, feel credible, improve personally. Three major attributes of excellence are: Attitude, the positive attitude, Desire, passion for excellence, and Belief that you can do it. Whether brilliant or mediocre, everyone must strive for excellence.

What is excellence then?

In the simplest terms, excellence is "doing one's best." Your output and quality of talent can be enhanced almost infinitely. Lata Mangeshkar, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Neeraj Chopra "excelled" in their 'art' with little or no school education. There are a few "human skills" that increase the bench-mark of excellence. We identified FIVE such "skills" - self-esteem, enthusiasm, humility, positive attitude, and communication skills (all the four).

Dr APJ Abdul Kalam considered them (2002) "essence of knowledge acquisition," and we called our training programmes Excellence-cum-knowledge-acquisition [ECKA].

Pluralistic Nature of Excellence

No one is born excellent. Aristotle perceived it merely as acquired attribute till it becomes a habit. One chief characteristic of excellence is one does not compete with others. One competes with oneself becoming better every day, every minute, every moment. Universalisation is thus the 'ultimate', whereby one learns and improves all the time, "do ones best" [see Diagram]. With government's recent announcement (May 2020) of Atmanirbhar Bharat (Self-reliant India), structured on five pillars of economy, infrastructure, system, vibrant demography, and demand, the nation is now required, under the fourth pillar (Vibrant Demography) to rise and move forwards with accelerated speed. UOE is the answer.

(Writer is a retired CSIR Scientist)