Bahubhashini can make education accessible to every corner: Pradhan

Union Minister for Education and Skill Development, Dharmendra Pradhan while inaugurating the R&D showcase in IIT Delhi, said Bahubhashini, one of the 75 projects displayed, could remove the language barriers of the country. The all-IIT R&D showcase titled IInvenTive, is the first-ever display of the projects being undertaken by every IIT in India.

Professor Pushpak, IIT Bombay while speaking to Business Standard said that “Benefits of higher education are not reaching the corners of this country because of the language barrier”. Hence the students who are more comfortable in the vernacular languages often found it difficult to follow the lectures which were in English. The Bhashini programme entails a real time conversion of one language to another. Subhashish Choudhary, Director, IIT Bombay also reiterated that the Bhashini programme would help the students across the length and breadth of the country.

But the scope of the programme is not limited to education alone but to other domains like e-governance where administrative documents like govt notifications and legal documents need to be translated immediately. It is also applicable for the Judiciary which has many case papers pending as they await to be translated in English or Hindi in the higher courts.

The R&D showcase also included multiple indigenous projects like drone technology, hydrogen fuels and real-time mapping of floods in India.

Pradhan further said that all IITs should have skill development centres which aren’t limited to carpentering or mobile repairs only but to more sophisticated technologies like semiconductor manufacturing, drone repairs and blockchain. He said that the parameters of IITs shouldn’t be limited to only placements and packages but also towards the penetration of innovation in the market which is simultaneously monetised along with jobs created.

Sunil Mittal, Chairman, Bharti enterprises who was the guest of honour said “India will cross Germany as the world’s third largest economy in the next 3 to 4 years.”

He further explained how the global technology hub has been shifting from the UK to the US to Japan over the last century to Taiwan, Korea and China in the past twenty years and finally it was India’ s turn as the technology hub of the world. Both Mittal and Pradhan stressed on the importance of industry academia relationship with the need to connect emerging technologies with market and society.

Pradhan further added that technology will drive the next phase of growth and development with IT and communications technology among the front runners in India. He said that the leadership in IITs needed to understand the Emerging purchasing capacity and hence needed more research-based entrepreneurship with machine language and artificial intelligence.

The R&D Fair is held to mark the 75th anniversary of India's independence under the Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav initiative. The event will include 75 projects and will showcase projects with different themes. The project is in line with the vision of Make in India, Digital India and Atmanirbhar Bharat.