Narendra Modi inaugurated Param Pragya, a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence-driven high-performance supercomputing facility, at the Sonipat campus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi on Thursday at the institution’s fifty-seventh convocation ceremony. The Prime Minister told the graduating class he was proud of their achievements and also thought about gender representation among the top medal winners. Many students were recognized for their achievements and he too would like to see more female students among the winners and they are needed to build a better place, he said, and every step taken by young people helps build the nation's intellectual strength.
As the Prime Minister pondered the transformation of the graduates’ lives in the last few years, he recalled their first days on campus and the excitement on orientation day and the sense of accomplishment at the convocation. He added that students must have an overwhelming feeling of satisfaction from the rigorous academic course and a sense of excitement to go forward and get on the start of a new phase of their professional life. And he said that each generation faces unique historical challenges and is held by unique national obligations, and the young technocrats will see that the developments in their career and innovation in the next three to four decades would be the decisive factor for India to become a fully developed nation, as well as a Viksit Bharat.
Looking to the future, Prime Minister Modi pointed out that research and innovation are the future opportunities for graduates and listed various policy interventions taken by the Indian Government to make it a scientific hub of the country. He mentioned the Prime Minister's Research Fellowship, the National Research Foundation, Research, Development and Innovation Scheme and a substantial funding of up to one lakh crore rupees for the research sector. He also explained how the much-celebrated "One Nation One Subscription" program is democratizing knowledge in India by providing full access to the world's best research journals to researchers in smaller towns and remote institutions at no cost.
In the wake of a rapidly changing world and ever-evolving technological trends, the Prime Minister encouraged the graduates to take lifelong learning as the way to living and succeeding. Global strategic equations and professional fields are changing and changing rapidly at an ever-greater speed and so far no one knows exactly what the world is going to look like decades from now. He reminded the young minds to develop and be adaptable and to look at ways to improve their skills continuously and thank the people of IIT Delhi and their teachers for the friends, teachers, mentors, and support staff, so that IIT Delhi as a foundation for the future will serve as a guide.
