The Indian government has been working to foster an ecosystem for industry-institute collaboration and create Centres of Excellence in order to emerge as a tech-savvy nation in future, Nirmala Sitharaman, the Union Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister said here.

“As Prime Minister added two new slogans ‘Jai Vigyan, Jai Anusandhan’ to the earlier ‘Jai Jawan’ and ‘Jai Kisan’, the emphasis will be on making India ‘technologically savvy advanced country by 2047,” she said during the 10th convocation of Indian Institute of Information Technology Design and Manufacturing Kancheepuram (IIITDM Kancheepuram), near Chennai.

Discussing various steps taken by the government, she said the Union Government had set up quite a few Centres of Excellence such as the Centre for Smart Manufacturing, Centre for Artificial Intelligence and IoT. These have been commissioned with support from government schemes and also from the contributions from the society itself.

Smart manufacturing

“So it is not about building one or two IITs, but creating institutions like IIITs with specific emphasis areas such as smart manufacturing. It is important to have these institutions so that we create an ecosystem that can help science and technology also drive innovation. This is the kind of direction we are very clearly dedicating ourselves and resources are allocated in the budget and make sure such institutions draw the best of talents,” he added.

Futuristic needs

Sitharaman stated that the representation of private industry people on the Board of these institutions will help understand the futuristic needs of the industries, particularly the sunrise sectors and the ones that are extended PLI schemes so that India becomes land for manufacturing and be self-sufficient such that no supply chain disruption causes the country’s manufacturing to suffer.

“We need to produce our students to be capable of getting into the industry, which serves India’s development goals. This Synergy is now, I think, much achieved by most of the institutions because the Government speaks to them and they give input,” she said.

“According to UN Population Statistics of 2019, the working age population of India will overtake China in 2028 and that working-age population will reach 65 per cent of our population by the year 2036 and it will stay at that level of 65 per cent. It means that the productivity and the contribution to the GDP will be much higher than what the world can see today, she said.

Need to keep upgrading

She said India’s higher education was no less when compared to global universities and people who have studied in Indian universities were occupying top positions in global firms. “But that is not to say nothing needs to be done. We have to constantly keep upgrading the teaching-learning experience and therefore we need to be continually on the top,” she added.

A total of 380 students graduated from IITDM. This included 6 Ph. Ds, 53 M.Techs, 110 Dual Degrees and 211 B. Tech recipients. 

Sitharaman also laid the foundation stone of the Institute’s auditorium and inaugurated the Centre of AI, IIT and Robotics. 

This year, IIITDM achieved 97% placements with the highest CTC of ₹32 lakh per annum and an average CTC of ₹10.06 lakh. Chief recruiters included Amazon, AMD, Ericsson, Google, L&T and Samsung among others. 

comment COMMENT NOW