The Hindu Business Line : Agri, pharma, energy sectors vital to spur growth: Kalam

THE President, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, today said sectors such as agriculture, energy, pharmaceuticals and science and technology should enhance efficiency and productivity to facilitate a faster growth of national development.

Interest rates from the banks need to be more proactive to stimulate the growth of the right type of small, medium and agro food processing industries. The combination of entrepreneurship education in the schools and colleges, the hassle-free flow of venture capital and evolution of good market will give additional momentum for national growth, the President said in his address to the nation on the eve of 55th Republic Day.

The challenge before the agriculture sector is to gradually increase production to around 400 million tonnes per annum till 2020, though the availability of land will reduce from 170 million hectares to 100 million hectares.

"Institutions of pharmaceutical sciences and pharma industries need to evolve an integrated and comprehensive national pharma vision to meet the challenges of design and drug development, production and marketing," Dr Kalam said.

The major challenge before the pharma community is to prevent the entry of spurious drugs and eradicate its presence from the market, he said.

India's power generation capacity of 1,00,000 MW has to be tripled by the year 2020 and the country needs to achieve this by drawing on non-conventional energy sources. Also, the present nuclear capacity of 2,700 MW should be enhanced to more than 20,000 MW by 2020. Science and technology institutions should give a thrust on nano science and biotechnologies to achieve global leadership in these areas in the coming decade. "The scientific community must realise that the competitiveness can come only by integrated mission-driven programmes partnered by academy, R&D organisation and industry," Dr Kalam said.

The Indian economy has shown a robust growth, the foreign exchange reserves have crossed $100 billion, the rupee is steady, and the middle class resurgence and the domestic buying power are on the rise.

"This has made our economy one of the fastest growing in the world. The time has come for these economic benefits to reach speedily the rural population through development programmes such as PURA (Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas) and interlinking of rivers," Dr Kalam said.

The President also referred to the leak of Common Admission Test (CAT) questions papers, saying that many important national examinations have been the target of attack by a select group of corrupt individuals. Such individuals should be sternly dealt with to protect the image of national selection system and the quality.

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