Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said the Eleventh Five-Year Plan was basically a knowledge investment plan and his government's effort has been to create the next big wave of investment in higher education.

"We are one of the youngest nations in the world and according to observers, India has the potential to create over 500 million trained people by the year 2022 which is over a fourth of the global workforce," he said.

Singh was addressing students and the faculty of the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.

He said the big opportunity for India will come from an education revolution "that we must undertake as our most important national endeavour".

The government is trying to universalize quality elementary education through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and a major expansion of secondary schooling has already begun, he said.

"In higher education, we are building eight new IITs, seven new IIMs, 16 central universities, 14 world class universities and five new Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research," he said.

The government is fully committed to fulfilling various plans and targets for educational development of the country. The Prime Minister stressed the need for facilitating creative partnerships between the public and private sectors in the field of education. 

The Prime Minister said many eminent educational institutions all over the world were partnering with industry to set up collaborative 'knowledge partnerships' in campuses and they were to the mutual advantage of both industry and academia.

"The knowledge industry is driven by innovation and that innovation is incubated in institutions of higher learning and research," he said.

Singh said his government was putting in place an integrated national knowledge network that would have nodes to all major institutions of higher education.

"This network would help our institutions of higher learning to connect with each other and carry on the relevant inter-disciplinary dialogue," he said.

Academic resources can then flow from institutions like IITs, IIMs, national research institutions and universities into each other enriching every participating institution.

The first phase of the network would become functional before the end of this year and IIT, Guwahati would be a part of it, Singh said.

"The country expects you to use your creativity, enterprise, leadership and innovation to solve the problems that challenge us", Singh told students. 

The Prime Minister said six new IITs had already started functioning and expressed happiness that IIT, Guwahati was mentoring one of them in Patna.

The government is also implementing a National Initiative for Skill Development which will provide the youth with vocational and professional educational opportunities to realize their individual potential and create a globally competitive India, he said.

Ten new National Institutes of Technology, 20 Indian Institutes of Information Technology and a thousand new polytechnics were also being established, he said. The Prime Minister said he was happy to note that this was the first industry-led IT training centre in the Northeast.

He said efforts must be made to train and educate the youth of the Northeast who had English language skills and were very visible in the service industry in different parts of the country.