Exciting opportunities await youngsters due to rapid infrastructure growth in India: Railways Minister

Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, on Saturday said that the rapid growth in physical and digital infrastructure in India in recent years had provided plenty of exciting opportunities for graduating youngsters.

Minister for Railways, Communications, Electronics and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw, on Saturday said that the rapid growth in physical and digital infrastructure in India in recent years had provided plenty of exciting opportunities for graduating youngsters.

Delivering the convocation address at the 19th convocation of the SRM Institute of Science and Technology (SRMIST) in Chennai, the Minister said the country had witnessed tremendous growth. He said this improved infrastructure would make a big difference irrespective of which sectors the graduating students wanted to enter. Highlighting data regarding the growth achieved in some sectors, he said 98% of the mobile phones used by Indians were imported 10 years ago; in contrast, 98 % of mobile phones used by Indians today are manufactured within the country.

Similarly, though India rolled out 5-G only 10 months ago, it now had 2.75 lakh 5-G sites, compared to only 1 lakh sites in rich countries like the United States, which rolled out 5-G earlier, he said.

The Minister said he had suggested to the SRMIST management to set up a 5-G lab, through which students could develop solutions for various problems for the country and the world. He said students in a 5-G lab in another institution had developed a solution to spray fertilisers using drones with 5-G technology.

Pointing out that 933 crore digital payment transactions were made in India in the past one month, he said students today could develop solutions for the whole world, because of the digital public infrastructure now available in India. He said this infrastructure had facilitated the creation of more startups with the country now having 1 lakh startups compared to 400 10 years ago.

Besides university education, he urged the students to pay attention to three attributes viz., focus, clarity of thought and perseverance to succeed in life. Delivering the convocation address in an interactive manner rather than the customary formal address, Mr. Vaishnaw said though he was a student of three universities, he had never been able to attend his own convocation.

T.R. Paarivendhar, founder-chancellor, SRMIST, said this year’s graduands were special as they were graduating when the country was entering the ‘Amrit Kaal’ of the 75th year of Independence and had assumed the G20 presidency. Mr. Paarivendhar, who is also the MP of Perambalur constituency, thanked Mr. Vaishnaw for saying that the constituency’s long-pending proposal for a railway line was under consideration.