The Ramanandha Adigalar Auditorium at Kumaraguru College of Technology was packed as over 1700 students from at least 10 colleges in and around Coimbatore converged this morning for an interface with the Mr S. Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO and Managing Director of Infosys Technologies Ltd, Bangalore.
He was here to kick-start ‘Voice of Tomorrow – Fuel to Excel', an initiative of The Hindu and the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Coimbatore, in association with Kumaraguru College of Technology.
While hailing the city's strength in education and healthcare, Mr Gopalakrishnan quoted a few inspiring lines from ‘Voice of Tomorrow', which read something like this: ‘You may give them your love but not your thoughts, you may house their body but not their soul for the soul dwells in the house of tomorrow, which you can't visit, not even in your dreams.'
He recalled these lines and said, “we can't always build a future for the youth, but we can build the youth for the future.”
On this note, Mr Gopalakrishnan urged the students, the present day tech-savvy youth – the torch-bearers of change to gear up to face the challenges.
While highlighting India's demographic advantage over China, Western Europe and Japan among others, he said, “though India's stars are well aligned success is not guaranteed.
“The entire world is looking to India and we are far from tapping the demographic dividend.”
Challenges
One of the challenges for India is to create jobs for the 70 million-odd people that are in the productive age band. “We should leverage on entrepreneurship, on creating small enterprises, on services sector - in which India has leapfrogged and have characteristics similar to a developed economy where services sector dominates.
“India has to retain the image of strong global power; to take the country to the forefront the youth should focus on their thoughts and ideas for sustainability.”
Stressing the need to invest in education, the Infosys Chief said “this is one way to secure the future for India.”
“There is a need to anticipate the future requirements and ensure that we develop those skills in a systematic way, build a bridge between urban and rural India by investing on infrastructure.”
He also hinted at the need to innovate here so as to make it affordable, stressed on the importance of inclusive growth and sharpening core competence.
To make this happen, Mr Gopalakrishnan shared his experience and learning with the youth, comparing it to the Team India's win in the World Cup - driving the spirit of team work, hard work and patience, focus on the goals and the sense of urgency and speed to do everything.