PM’s Keynote address at Pan IIT Global Summit

• Friends, I am delighted to join you all today. I have had the opportunity to address convocations at IITs in Chennai, Mumbai, Guwahati and most recently, at Delhi.
• I am always impressed after interacting with students from IITs. I also come back refreshed and reassured about the future of India and our planet.
• Friends, You are sons and daughters of India, who are serving humanity. Your spirit for innovation is helping the world dream big.
• It is also among your greatest strengths. Perhaps it comes second only to your technical and management skills.
• Someone should calculate the cumulative contribution of IIT alumni to economic value across the planet. I am sure it would compare with the GDP of a nation that has a reasonable size.
• Friends, There was a time, when a gathering like this would have included alumni from just five or six IITs. That number is growing now, and is close to two dozen.
• The number of students and alumni have also grown. At the same time, we have ensured that the brand of IITs has only become stronger.
• We in India are strongly committed to promote science and technology education in India. You would have noticed that in recent times, a culture of hackathons is developing in India.
• I have also had the opportunity to be a part of some of these hackathons. In these hackathons, I see young minds giving out-standing solutions to national and global problems.
• We have been working with many countries in South East Asia and Europe in this area. Our aim is to ensure that our youngsters get an international plat-form to showcase their skills.
• And, learn from best practices globally. Starting 2nd October, on Gandhi Jayanti, India hosted the Vaibhav Summit.
• Lasting for nearly a month, this Summit brought together top-quality talent in the fields of science and innovation.
• The number of participants was about Twenty-three thousand. There were 230 panel discussions. Almost 730 hours of discussions.
• This Summit was productive and it sets the tone for future collaborations in science and innovation.
• Friends, India is witnessing a sea change in the way it works. Things we thought could never happen are being delivered at great speed.
• Let me give a small example from a field you know well. Earlier, when IITs produced aero-space engineers, there was not a strong domestic industrial eco-system to employ them.
• Today, with our historic reforms in the Space sector, the last frontier before humanity has opened up to Indian talent.

(The views expressed are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the position of the organisation)