The country is proud of late M Visvesvaraya, an eminent engineer, planner and political figure in contemporary times. The British had honoured him with knighthood for the most outstanding contribution to modern India’s history of engineering.
The nation commemorates his birthday as the Engineers’ Day in the country. On 13th Convocation of Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, concurring with the 155th birth anniversary of Visvesvaraya, the President of India delivered his convocational speech in which he highlighted the importance and relevance of using technology for such innovative enterprises as would generate job opportunities for the Indian youth and enrich the country with material gains. In his address to the academics at various occasions, the President has been laying emphasis on the need of developing technology with innovative and entrepreneurial pursuit to transform India into a modern Country.
The President has a vision of an advanced India provided our educational and professional institutes create an atmosphere of confidence among the students and faculties in diversification of technology in which innovation plays vital role. Instead of our engineers and technocrats seeking employment after they are equipped with professional training, they should look to become entrepreneurs and provide employment opportunities to others. The encouraging thing is that we have no dearth of talent. What we need is direction and support to the budding technocrats. The President had been lamenting that no Indian university could find a place among first 200 universities of the world. This was discouraging. However, he was happy to note that of late at east two Indian IITs could find place in the existing list of 200 A Class universities of the world. These were the IIT Bangalore and IIT Delhi. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore is ranked at No. 147 and Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi is ranked at No. 179. Apart from this, IIT-Bombay ranks at No. 202. The ranking status has increased owing to the Government taking some serious steps in improving the quality of education and research in the institutions of excellence. This is a good beginning of our march on the path of modernization and catching up with the advanced world.
Innovation in technology in our country has to be in line with our requirements and our life style. Among our requirements, the foremost is that of providing gainful employment to vast Indian youth especially in rural areas. The Government has focused on imparting skills to the youth to make them self-employed and thereby lesson the burden on the Government. The President looks beyond self-employment. Of course, he hopes that banks will play their crucial role in make self-employment and acquiring of skills possible for more and more youth. From the stage of self-employment, we need to graduate to the stage of entrepreneurship. As entrepreneurs, we need to have two objectives in front of us. One is to provide employment opening to others who are waiting in the wings, and the other is to generate wealth that will give tremendous boost to the economy and living standards of people in the country. The aim is of inclusive and sustainable development.
Fortunately, our wise and farsighted leadership in the past rightly envisaged that India could step into modern world only if she gave due importance and recognition to science and technology as the mainstay of our developmental process. The IITs that came into being are the outcome of this thinking. Along with these, we have now a network of Nits, which are churning technocrats in large numbers. This is the healthiest aspect of our post independence enterprises. While the standards of education and faculties in these institutions grow, the fallout will be discernible in a sort of technological revolution in the country. Once that process begins, it will be the real beginning of big change in all aspects of social and economic development. This, we think is the sum total of Government’s ‘Start up and Stand up India’ campaign.
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