Inaugural Speech of Hon'ble Minister
of State (S&T), Shri B.S. Rawat
President, FICCI, Shri Lodha; Secretary, DSIR, Dr. Mashelkar,
Secretary - General, FICCI, Dr. Amit Mitra;
Shri Jagdish Singh, ladies and gentlemen and Media friends,
I am happy to be amongst this distinguished gathering of
captains of Industry, luminaries from academia and national
laboratories and leaders from different Government Departments.
First of all I would like to congratulate this year's DSIR
National Award winners. I am proud of their achievements.
I hope their example will be emulated by other industries.
The image of India in terms of its prowess in higher education
and science & technology is very high. We have a vastly
diversified and massive structure comprising of several
academic institutions. As you all know, universities not
only produce a large number of people with high academic
qualifications, but also, at any given point of time, there
are a large reservoir of manpower comprising faculty and
students, who are storehouse, and indeed, powerhouse of
knowledge. Many of them are engaged in research in frontier
areas. They are young, enthusiastic and eager to do something
new. This is a very valuable resource, which has been created
after expanding a large part of national income.
I personally feel that this resource had been scarcely
utilised by industry so far. I am aware that industry visits
institutions like IlTs., I.I.Ms., Regional Engineering Colleges,
(now renamed as National Institutes of Technology) and other
engineering colleges for campus recruitment. But how many
does the industry visit any pure science or humanities based
universities? What is the 'demand of science' that our industry
places?. There is no reason why the academic community in
universities, which is much larger than the manpower in
technical institutions like IITs, IIMs and NITs cannot develop
synergy with industry as it happens abroad. If one sees
towering universities like Cambridge, Stanford and Harvard,
one sees a ferment of activity and networking. We turn out
a large number of people with high academic qualifications
who are not directly employable by industry. This need not
be so. It should be possible to develop synergy between
industry and universities so that the output of universities
is of direct relevance to industry and when I talk of the
output, I do not mean the educated manpower alone, but also
the output due to the research carried out by the faculty
and the student community. We may recall that discovery
of Radium by Madame Curie was a result of her research for
a Ph.D. thesis. Universities are supposed to produce manpower,
which is needed by industry. But they produce new knowledge
too. Both have to be utilised by the industry.
Government has been impressing upon universities and other
organisations of higher education and research, to acquire
a higher degree of financial self-sufficiency. I can visualise
the problem of universities. It is not possible to run universities
on fees collected from student community alone. They need
funding from agencies other than Government which can only
be industry. Industry must start bearing the burden of training
manpower needed by it. I would not recommend this funding
to come from industry as charity. It must come as a result
of universities and industry working for each other. The
best way to fund universities will be to make them partners
in research and up-gradation of skills of the existing manpower
already employed by industry.
The theme of this Conference is therefore extremely important.
I will keenly look forward to the deliberations and recommendations
of this Conference and I assure you that they will receive
the fullest attention of the Government.
I am very happy to inaugurate this Conference.
Jai Hind
