Chennai: “Climate change, growing levels of pollution, increasing demand for energy, eradicating poverty are major challenges that require innovative and out-of-the-box ideas,” said Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu yesterday.
Naidu was here in the city yesterday to inaugurate the Centre of Excellence for Manufacturing of National Initiative for Developing and Harnessing Innovation at Vel Tech University, Avadi. Speaking at the event, he said while urbanisation and industrialisation was increasing on one hand, agrarian distress was on the other.
Problems faced by today’s world were multi-dimensional and the government and the private sector need to step up the funds for taking up research and development, he said, adding that linkages between the academia and the industry have to grow organically.
Naidu stated that the buzzwords in today’s world were innovation, incubation and start-ups. It was time for India to seize and promote the culture of innovation and technology-based entrepreneurship in order to stay ahead and play an important role in the fourth industrial revolution.
Sixty-five per cent of the Indian population was below the age of 35 years and this huge human capital must be converted into a force multiplier for the economy and for this the youth must be technologically empowered.
The Vice-President further stated that the country has an opportunity to focus on innovation in the field of education to meet the global competition and for that tremendous transformation from reorienting the curriculum framework to refining the infrastructure with the sole objective of imparting world class quality education is required.
Innovation and entrepreneurship are going to be the twin engines that propel India to a new era of economic prosperity and social inclusion. With the country producing lakhs of engineering graduates every year it was essential to provide the right eco-systems to make India a leader in start-ups and technology driven high growth ventures.
Pointing out that India has been ranked 57th by the Global Innovation Index, Naidu said, “Ee need to focus on reorienting our higher education system, particularly engineering and scientific streams, to ensure students come up with solutions to the problems faced by the country and world.”