VELLORE: While delivering the 29th convocation address at VIT University on Saturday, Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu called upon engineering graduates aspiring to go abroad to return to their homeland and support fellow citizens.
“My advice is go (abroad), but get back to take part and enjoy the fruits of development that is taking place here,” he told them. Handing over the degree certificates and medals to the graduating students, the minister, quoting a UNIDO report said, “Every year one lakh Indian professionals leave India amounting to a resource loss of over US $ 2 billion.”
While the government was investing valuable resources on higher education, this brain drain could be averted if they stayed back here and made their talent and skills available for the development of this country.
Expressing concern over the NASSCOM report that pointed out only 15 percent of the engineering graduates in the country were employable, Naidu said that it was a very serious comment on the state of technical education in India. While China was able to provide graduate education to 34 percent of its student population as against 6 percent in India, the situation was worse in the case of post-graduates as India’s figure was 3.4 percent as against China’s 39. “But time has come to remedy the situation both qualitatively and quantitatively”, he assured.
“We are witnessing one of the most exciting times in the history of Independent India. After a long period people of this country have evinced high hopes on the new government and this is the time to take the country to the next level of development”, he noted. The PM’s focus on ‘Skill, Scale and Speed India’ initiative would address this issue, he said.
He went on to add that Indians could very well emerge as the workforce of the world by taking advantage of the demographic dividend of 600 million people in the working age group.
The minister also called upon the educational institutions to produce ‘complete individuals’ who are guided by logical thinking and self-confidence, capacity to face adversities, ability to apply their knowledge with a humane social perspective.
The guest of honour Anupam Ahuja, general manager, PayPal, wanted young graduates to be humble, simple and not to be satisfied with the status quo.
VIT chancellor G Viswanathan in his address urged the Centre to allocate more funds to start new higher educational institutions and give more focus on the manufacturing sector.
Vice chancellor V Raju welcomed the gathering.