Comments
The challenge of the 21 Century is to provide urban quality life to the rural masses so as to bridge the divide between the rich and the poor, according to former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
For evolving a sustainable system, educational institutions, industries and the Government should work together, he said.
In his valedictory address at the International Conference on Sustainable Development and Governance: Building Commerce and Communities’, organised jointly by the Amrita School of Business of Amrita University, Coimbatore and Deakin University of Australia here on Friday, he said the challenge the society faced now was to ‘take urban quality amenities’ to the three billion rural population of the world. This will bridge the gap between the rich and the poor, urban and rural. He said studies have shown that the poorest in the world were actually paying high per unit cost for ‘clean water, nutritious food and health care’.
Researchers should identify the state of potable water availability in the regions. This should provide data on water availability, pollution status etc that could be the source for evolving potable water grid, he said.
He said the science and technology community should focus on using the 21st century technology to solve problems. There should be a re-think on how convergence of technologies could help solve some of the problems of the rural masses of the world and help them unleash their potential so that they could lead a better life `without damaging the environment’.
Kalam, underlining the importance of formulation of sustainable technological framework, was confident that the answers to the questions that might rise in this search would lead to convergence of technologies. This would pave the way for the sustainable technology framework enabling sustainable development for the benefit of the user community.
He felt that if India launches Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) Satellite using digital radio transmission technology along with remote sensing technologies answers to such questions might be possible.Vice-Chancellor of Amrita University P. Venkat Rangan and Nava Subramaniam, Deakin University, spoke.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.