President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Wednesday called for empowering women so that they can contribute in the process of nation building.

"Women are equal partners in national development. You all have to get ready to take the responsibility of promoting a noble society," Kalam said while addressing the closing ceremony of the 150th anniversary celebrations of the Calcutta Girls High School here.

"We have to ensure the continuity of secondary education and university education for girls. Periodically, secondary level students should be counselled to continue their education both at diploma and degree level," he said.

Kalam said enlightened women were very important for nation building since their thoughts, the way of working and value system would lead to faster development of a good family, good society and a good nation.

The president said more youth should enter politics to make it corruption-free and build a stronger nation.

"If youth participate in politics, then there will be dynamism in politics... Removal of corruption is a beautiful mission," the president said.

In another function, to launch the Varishtha Mediclaim policy of National Insurance Corporation, Kalam said that with technology changing to a near paperless system, the insurance companies should consider dematerialisation of insurance policies for their easy storage.

"It is time that the National Insurance Corporation may like to consider the provision of dematerialised policies in electronic form to policyholders. This will enable easy storage of polices by policyholders," he said.

The president Wednesday also inaugurated Infocomm 2006, the biggest information, communication and technology (ICT) exposition organised by Nasscom and Businessworld.

"When India started to participate in the ICT revolution, West Bengal and many of the eastern states were not even on the radar screen but now West Bengal has woken up to the world of ICT," he said.