Comments
India is today developing as a knowledge hub of the world and in that process, knowledge intensive work and opportunities are growing fast in this country, said Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.
She was delivering the special chief guest address at the 13th convocation of VELS University (VISTAS) here on Friday.
She listed the current government’s achievements in the last nine years to highlight India’s today position in the globe with respect to education.
Sitharaman said the country is establishing a new university every week, an Atal Tinkering Labs every third day, a new college is constructed every second day, one new Industrial Training Institute (ITI) is formed every day and one new Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is opened every year.
“This shows higher education receives the highest priority in our government,” she noted.
Sharing some statistics, Sitharaman said the total number of university level institutions in the country has increased by 53 per cent to 1,113 institutions against 720 institutions before 2014, 97 per cent increase in MBBS seats to 99,763 (51,348 seats), and 81 per cent increase in medical colleges to 700 (from 387 colleges).
She also said the government lays utmost importance to research and innovation. “10 years ago only 4,000 patents were issued every year, today, due to policy support and simplified process of patent issuance, 30,000 patents are issued every year.”
“From less than 70,000 trademarks every year, today, 2.5-lakh trademarks are issued every year,” she added.
She also said Tamil Nadu and the southern region will benefit in a big way from a slew of agreements such as Artemis Accords (for Indo-US space collaboration), US Navy’s Master Ship Repair Agreement with Larsen and Toubro (L&T) Shipbuilding Ltd., and General Electric’s agreement to jointly manufacture F414 engines with state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., which were signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to the US.
The finance minister also conferred ‘Honoris Causa’ awards for the year upon RS Munirathinam, Founder-Chairman, RMK Group of Institutions, Girish Mathrubootham, founder & CEO, Freshworks, M Ramalingam, Professor, Department of Urology, Hindustan Hospital and Indian athlete and vice president of Athletics Federation of India Anju Bobby George.
A total of 75 students received gold medals, 169 students were conferred with Doctorate (PhD) degrees, 309 students got Master of Philosophy (MPhil) degrees and 679 students achieved their Masters degrees besides 3,139 students were granted bachelor degrees in various streams.
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.