New Delhi: The Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu on Monday called upon the higher education institutions and universities to review and align their existing courses to the emerging global trends or start new courses in tune with the national needs. Addressing the sixth convocation of PES University in Bengaluru today, the Vice President said that the 4th industrial revolution is knocking at our door and, to make best out of it, our universities must train the students in emerging areas such as 5G technologies, artificial intelligence, robotics and biotechnology.
He referred to India’s glorious past in the field of education and emphasised the special role Technological Universities have to play in transforming India into a knowledge power. Praising the Government’s decision to open the space sector for private players, the Vice President commended the PES University for building and launching two satellites in association with DRDO and ISRO. “I would urge our private institutions and universities to make the best use of this opportunity and to work towards making India self-reliant and technologically advanced in the space sector,” he added.
On this occasion, Naidu also felicitated Dr V Sambasiva Rao, who mentored the students in the launch of the two satellites.
Drawing attention to the tremendous benefits that drone technology offers to various sectors of the economy, he opined that India, with its traditional strengths in innovation, IT and frugal engineering, has the potential of becoming a global drone hub. In this regard, he called for creating skilled manpower for this sector and expressed happiness that PES University is actively considering starting courses on Drone Technology.
The Vice President also emphasised the need to adopt a multidisciplinary approach to R&D and asked the universities to lay more emphasis on implementable patents under Intellectual Property rights (IPR) rather than academic patents to give a fillip to economy and industry. Observing that many technical books published by foreign authors are used in Indian engineering courses, he exhorted Indian academicians to author books of global standards on contemporary themes.
“Indian authors can better contextualize the engineering course content with regard to Indian socio-economic conditions,” he said and opined that this would help the young students better understand and find solutions to the many problems faced by rural India, farmers and other underprivileged groups. He also called for creating study material in Indian languages and indigenous publication of academic journals.
Highlighting the importance of socially relevant research and technologies, the Vice President asked the universities to work on the issues of globally priority such as climate change and sustainable development. “We frequently read news reports about increasing pollution in Indian cities; I would urge our educational institutions to come up with technological solutions to such pressing problems faced by society, especially in agriculture” he added.
Calling for effective implementation of National Education Policy 2020, Shri Naidu advised universities to introduce more technical courses in the students’ mother tongue.
