SHILLONG: Education Minister Lahkmen Rymbui on Saturday said knowledge in science and technology can devise solutions to minimise the growing challenges and problems faced by the country.
Speaking at the Fifth Annual Convocation of National Institute of Technology, the minister said Meghalaya is facing challenges like poverty, unemployment, infrastructure, access to clean drinking water and indiscriminate use and depletion of natural resources.
“Most of these can be solved by innovations in science and technology. You (the students) are amply blessed to be bestowed with specialised knowledge that very few are fortunate to get,” he said.
With many countries making waves with new-age scientific innovation and advancement, he noted that students should inculcate the culture of innovation using technological prowess.
Rymbui termed the adoption of five villages near the permanent campus in Sohra under Unnat Bharat Ahiyan scheme by the institute as a culture of uplifting humanity.
“I am sure that you will take the onus of developing many more under-privileged villages that require intervention from knowledgeable entities,” he said and hoped for fast completion of the new campus.
Rymbui lauded the institute for operating “extremely well within the constraints” and producing graduates, postgraduates and doctorates.
“It is good to know that the performance of NIT Meghalaya has been remarkable as reflected in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) rankings of the past three years,” he added.
On students’ performance in science and technology, he said, “The state has been churning out many graduates in all the fields but it lacked in generation of graduates in the field of science and technology.”
The Director of NIT, Bibhuti Bhusan Biswal, said the institute had approved setting up of six new centres in the previous year which are fully functional.
“Apart from classroom activities, the Institute has also ventured into online environment to deliver its academic programmes in the form of Massive Open Online Courses,” he said.
Biswal also informed that the institute houses a state-of-the-art video recording studio with facilities for both content creation and content distribution.
“The studio is not only utilised by faculty members but also by neighbouring institutes to develop course content to add value to the national level initiatives like NPTEL and SWAYAM of the government of India,” he added.