Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu has called for tapping the creative potential of the country’s youth to make India a leading knowledge and innovation hub.

Addressing the students at the first Graduation Ceremony of PSG Institute of Technology and Applied Research at Coimbatore, the Vice President said that in this age of Intellectual Property Rights, the innovation and entrepreneurship of young professionals will play a major role in propelling India’s economy to newer heights and in creating an inclusive society.

“Please remember that knowledge is going to be the driver of Indian Economy and will play a vital role in improving the living conditions of the people. Therefore, India must rise to the occasion and reorient its higher education system to be globally competitive”, Naidu added.

Stressing the need to harvest India’s demographic dividend, the Vice President said that the time has come to reposition India as one of the leading economic powers in the world.

“We need to vastly expand our manufacturing industry, apart from turning our higher education institutions into world class centres of learning”, he added.

Pointing to the need for providing our youth with the wherewithal to make them job creators instead of allowing them to end up as job seekers, Naidu called for focusing on skill training, skill upgradation and promoting innovative entrepreneurship to meet the demands of various sectors, including agriculture.

Urging the youngsters to always uphold ethical values, the Vice President asked them to be responsible towards expectations and aspirations of the larger society.

Referring to former Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri ji’s clarion call of “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan” which was expanded to include “Jai Vigyan” by our former Prime Minister, Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee, Naidu said that in the current context, the slogan should read “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan, Jai Vigyan, Jai Anusandhan”, thus highlighting the crucial need for connectivity. Connectivity is key for development, he added.

Speaking about the power held by technology to transform lives, Shri Naidu said that technology should facilitate the access to basic facilities of life such as education and health. He added that IT brought the power of technology to our palm top. ‘Let this power be delivered to vulnerable sections and to improve the living conditions of the common man’, he said.

Underlining the importance of learning by doing, by designing, experimenting and finding solutions to contemporary problems, the Vice President urged students to focus on multidisciplinary applications of knowledge and new technologies such as Robotics, Big-Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence.