Javadekar asks IIT students to focus on innovation

HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday asked IITians to focus on innovation so that the country can reach higher levels of prosperity even as he expressed concern over the overall quality of research. He termed IITs, NITs and IISCs as temples of modern India and noted that Indian institutions don’t make it even to the top 200 in global rankings.

“We were once upon a time 25 per cent of the world trade, today we are not even one per cent of the world trade. We can achieve through continuous innovation. We can’t just recollect on our past glory,” he said at IIT-Delhi in his first “dialogue” with students of a higher education institute, after taking over as the HRD Minister. He said in those times people were up-to-date and even Columbus reached America while trying to find India.

The HRD minister said the government was taking up new programmes to position IITs in the global best institutions “because currently we are nowhere in the top 200”.Improving quality of research, building up labs, increasing proportion of foreign students and faculties is required, Javadekar said.