TezpuR:Calling for greater engagement be-tween academia and industries, President Pranab Mukher-jee on Thursday asked universities to beco-me breeding ground for technological advance-ments and said success of initiatives like ‘Make in India’ hinges on manu-facturing quality products.
In his address at the 12th Convocation of Tezpur University in this picture-sque town, he said it was incumbent on the univer-sities to align their research priorities to help the country deal with challenges of urbanisation.
He also referred to a decision taken at the Conference of VCs of central universities in Delhi earlier this year to set up Industry Interface Cell comprising representatives of the industry, alumni and faculty in each central varsity to initiate collaborative activities like joint research, faculty exchange, and sponsoring of chairs and endowments. “Success of ‘Make in India’ hinges on manufacturing quality industrial products where academia-industry interface would play a critical role,” he said at the convocation attended by Assam CM Tarun Gogoi, Governor J B Patnaik and Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal among others.
Asking leading educa-tional institutions to encou-rage innovation, Mukherjee said he had last month told the National Institute of Technologies to start working with at least five villages each to transform them into model villages.
In this context he mentioned about the Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana launched by the NDA government with the “objective to develop model villages with improved basic amenities, enhanced human development, access to rights and entitlements and wider social mobilisation”.
“Financial inclusion, creation of digital infra-structure and the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan have been dovetailed into this sche-me,” he said.(PTI)
