BENGALURU: The country is yet to solve a 50-year-old problem — the unequal attention given to the two technology institutes in the country, the ITIs and IITs — said Prof. Sadagopan, Director of IIIT-Bangalore.
He said one has been glorified while the other dumped. He was speaking at the first Bengaluru Skill Summit, part of the Bengaluru Tech Summit, here on Tuesday.
He saw the need for outstanding technicians in the sectors emerging today. “If NASA and ISRO missions fail, it’s not because of engineers but technicians,” added Sadagopan.
Pointing to the rare interactions between academia and industry, he said the two meet only on occasions like the summit. He urged innovators to focus on the 92 per cent of unorganised labour, who no one is worrying about.
While encouraging entrepreneurs to carry on from their prototype to the final marketable product, Dr E V Ramana Reddy, Additional Chief Secretary, Department of IT, BT and S&T, said 80 out of 100 innovators are failing between coming up with the idea to developing the proof of concept.
Among the centres of excellence set up by the government for training the youth in renewable energy, Nagesh H, Minister, Department of Excise and Department of Skill Development, lauded Congress leader D K Shivakumar for setting up the 2,000 MW solar power plant, which is among the largest in the world.
Nagesh gave awards to World Skill Champions — a cash award of Rs 3 lakh to Pranav Udayark Nutalapati, World Skills Silver Medallist, and Rs.1 lakh each to medallion winners Sumanth S C and Manjunath Desurakara.
Centre of Excellence to come up To provide better health care, RGUHS will set up Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru, Vice-Chancellor Dr Sachidananda said at the summit on Tuesday. The centre will facilitate research in medicine and gene therapy.
ISRO to do docking experiment
ISRO will go in for a space docking experiment where two satellites will be launched simultaneously. The satellites will be put in different orbits but will be brought together, said director of Ananth Technologies, Dr C D Sridhar.