Role of educational technologies in reemergence of India as a knowledge society

India thrived as a knowledge society in the past. However, the colonial interlude extending over centuries systematically eroded her knowledge base. Though recently there has been a growing interest and awakening among the people and the government towards the goal to reemerge as a knowledge society, systematic solutions have been eluding us due mainly to our rigid structures of education, particularly the higher education. In this paper we discuss how knowledge centers, which can be developed within and outside our present structures of education, can harness education technologies, in synergy with the information and communication technologies, to facilitate the institutionalization of knowledge reforms in India and accelerate her march towards this ambitious goal. Recently we have taken a modest experimental initiative along this direction by starting a physics knowledge center in our institute. We also present here the encouraging results of this experiment.