- Thursday, April 10, 2025
By: indiaweekly.biz Staff
PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi on Friday (2) said the clarion call for an ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ or ‘Self-reliant India’ will benefit international development as he sought the Indian diaspora’s support to realise his “dream”.
“India’s clarion call of an ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat includes a vision of global welfare. To realise this dream, I invite you all and seek your support,” Modi said at the inauguration of the Vaishvik Bhartiya Vaigyanik (VAIBHAV) Summit, a global virtual summit of overseas and resident Indian researchers and academicians being organised from October 2 to 31.
Modi also listed numerous steps taken by his government to boost science, research and innovation.
“Recently India introduced pioneering space reforms,” he noted. “These reforms provide opportunities for both industry and the academia.”
The prime minister said the government wanted to see more top-class scientific research to help the farmers.
“Our agricultural research scientists have worked hard to ramp up our production of pulses,” he highlighted as an example. “Today we import only a very small fraction of our pulses. Our food-grain production has hit a record high.”
Modi further said his government was encouraging indigenous vaccine production. “Four new vaccines were introduced into our communication programme in 2014 including an indigenously developed Rotavirus vaccine,” he said.
The VAIBHAV summit, he added, was bringing together eminent people from India as well as from abroad, making it a confluence of great minds from across the world.
“You have also made some good suggestions for improving the research ecosystem in India. I hope this summit will be very productive,” he told the participants.
Referring to the time periods such as the Stone Age, the Bronze Age… the digital age, Modi said each of those marked some key technological advancements.
“I would like to thank the scientists who offered their suggestions and ideas today,” he said. “You have brilliantly covered many subjects. Most of you highlighted the importance of greater collaboration between the Indian academic and research ecosystem with their foreign counterparts.”
The aim of the summit is to bring Indian origin luminaries in academic institutes and R&D organisations across the world and resident counterparts on a single platform to debate upon collaboration mechanisms to strengthen academic and science and technology base in India for global development.
The inauguration was followed by online deliberation sessions. The initiative involves multiple levels of interactions among overseas experts and Indian counterparts over a month-long series of webinars and video conferences, among other activities.
More than 3,000 overseas Indian origin academicians and scientists from 55 countries and more than 10,000 resident academicians and scientists are taking part in the summit, which is being organised by about 200 academic institutes and science and technology departments.
Over 1,500 panelists from 40 countries, 200 leading Indian R&D and academic institutions are virtually deliberating in 18 different areas and 80 topics in more than 200 deliberation sessions.
The concluding session of the summit launched on Gandhi Jayanti is planned on October 31 on the occasion of Sardar Patel Jayanti, the birth anniversary of India’s first home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who’s knows as the “Iron Man of India”.
