Curriculum of engineering colleges, IITs needs to be restructured: Kant

The curriculum of many engineering colleges and IITs needs to be totally reoriented and restructured to align with the present demand, G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant said.

While speaking at a three-day India Global Innovation Connect (IGIC) 2024 event in Bengaluru, Kant said there is an urgent need to bridge the gap between industry demands and the available talent pool and ramp up the skilled engineers pool in India, particularly in areas where there is a high demand, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, and cybersecurity.

"The curriculum of many of these engineering colleges and our IITs needs to be totally reoriented and restructured to align with the demands of today, to address the supply chain issue. The next five years of the Government will focus on skilling and apprenticeship to create a vast number of new jobs," Kant said on Thursday.

He said that India must position itself as the global centre for innovation, which needs to start with a transforming approach towards research and development.

"Despite the fact that many Indian companies lag in R&D, the government is committed to changing this with the introduction of a Rs 1 lakh crore fund, set to be unveiled in the next 3-4 months. The Mysore belt in Karnataka has the best ecosystem in India for manufacturing, specially semiconductor fabs, and can become a global hub for semiconductor design. We need to realign the engineering curriculum of IITs and other leading institutions to quickly produce engineers equipped for today's industrial demands," Kant said.

Department of Electronics, Information Technology Biotechnology and Science & Technology, managing director, Darshan HV said that technology is the future, and supporting entrepreneurs and startups, to use technology as a tool for innovation and development is crucial for growth.

Smadja & Smadja Strategic Advisory, Chairman, Claude Smadja said that India has made significant strides in deep tech, health tech, semiconductors and aerospace technologies and has been very focussed already on Innovation and on supporting startups of the 21st century.

"The new government at the Centre as such does not need new policies but rather at this stage it should focus on accelerating the development and expanding on what is already happening. We are at an inflection point and the challenge now is to cross this and scale up to higher levels, he said.