Investment in technology needs to be stepped up: VP Naidu

Investments in science and technology needed to be stepped up to address various problems the country was facing, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu said here today.
He listed poverty, unemployment, pollution, diseases, urban-rural divide, lack of clean drinking water and also the issues relating to crime and security as among the problems.
Addressing the valedictory session of the India International Science Festival, Naidu said emerging fields of artificial intelligence, robotics, Internet of things, big data analytics and digital manufacturing were going to change the way of living and added that hence, these areas needed to be fully exploited.
The vice president appealed to the corporates and industries to "join hands to set up an exclusive corpus for encouraging innovative, out-of-the-box research and development projects and disruptive technologies that can provide long-lasting answers to the problems faced by the people".

Emphasising on research and development activities, he listed a host of challenges, including climate change, global warming, sustainable development and regional disparities, in this regard.
"Challenges to come in the coming days are clean energy, clean water and diseases and these are going to be the biggest challenges with population increase in India.

"Keeping this in mind, only science can find solutions to both the present and emerging problems in the years to come," Naidu said.
He added that he was "happy that the Government of India, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has given a call -- a mantra of reform, perform and transform".

"Transformation is the need of the nation," Naidu said and added that all the citizens, including the scientists and researchers, had a great responsibility to move towards that end.
Minister of State for Science, Technology and Earth Sciences Y S Chowdary listed the Centre's initiatives to nurture entrepreneurs, so that one could "give employment".
Rejecting the criticism of "jobless growth", he said it was not correct.
"Technology can only generate new generation of jobs and the people have to be trained for such jobs," Chowdary noted.