The Hindu Business Line : India’s nuclear expertise globally recognised: Kakodkar

Mangalore, Dec. 2 India today holds one of the largest pool of experts in nuclear science and technology, according to Dr Anil Kakodkar, Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission, and Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy.

Delivering the fifth convocation address at the National Institute of Technology Karnataka (NITK) at Surathkal, near Mangalore, on Saturday, he said the country’s contribution to scientific publications in the area of Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors, Fast Breeder Reactors and Thorium Utilisation Technologies is significant.

Internationally there is recognition of the country’s strong technological capability in this area. There are now opportunities for India to participate in mega science projects, he said.

The country also needs professionals for supporting the growth of its power programme, the magnitude of which is destined to become larger in the coming decades.

HR challenge

“All this means a paradigm shift in terms of scale of working as well as in terms of diversity of activities that we would need to handle. This is a major human resource development challenge. It is also a major opportunity to consolidate the gains of past decades and open up new avenues to our young scientists and engineers, which were not available before,” he said.

Stating that India has been making important contributions to the global knowledge pool for ages, he wondered why the country remains vulnerable to foreign dependencies in spite of the capability for original thinking. This arises on account of disconnect between the knowledge activity and its transformation into robust technology.

“Building technologies out of our own knowledge pool within the country is of crucial importance. If we remain dependant on foreign technologies, we can never become world leaders and we cannot survive the global competition unless we achieve global leadership at least in some areas where we have strengths,” he said. 0Urging the need for students to remain India-focused, he said the domestic linkages between high level of research activity and its conversion into innovative technologies can be nurtured only on the basis of such an orientation, as otherwise there is a continuing possibility of Indian brains contributing to western technologies with attendant higher costs in accessing them for domestic development.

He stressed the need for bridging the gap between translating the laboratory development into an industrially robust product.

Prof Goverdhan Mehta, Chairman of the board of governors of NITK, presided over the function. Prof Sandeep Sancheti, Director of NITK, welcomed the gathering.

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