From the hovering arches of the Chenab Rail Bridge to the timeless structure of Ayodhya’s Ram Mandir, India’s latest engineering marvels have as a lot daring creativeness as they do metal and stone.
As Professor T. G. Sitharam, a famend civil engineer and an IISc Bangalore professor, says, “We have to develop merchandise. We have to encourage our younger individuals to assume, something is feasible… You need to break the boundaries of your creativeness.
“That’s the place I stated, ‘imagineering’ goes to play a significant function. That’s the place we have to focus,” he remarks in an interview with Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory.
This spirit of unbounded pondering will be seen because the opening salvo of reworking India into a worldwide product powerhouse, notes Prof Sitharam, who has been the director at IIT Guwahati. He’s presently serving because the chairman of the All India Council for Technical Schooling (AICTE).
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Unleashing inventive energy
“For those who assume together with your thoughts and present your new concepts from an progressive perspective, you are able to do loads as a nation,” says Prof Sitaram.
It was this mindset that furnished the Chenab Rail Bridge as a contemporary engineering marvel.
“[What’s] beneath is hidden. The whole undertaking is a superstructure. Plenty of work has occurred beneath the bridge—underground—that’s the fantastic thing about this bridge,” he explains, as he compares geotechnical engineers to docs who navigate uncertainty with humility. When creativeness leads, bodily obstacles yield.
That very same ethos guided the Ayodhya Ram Mandir crew as they answered a century-spanning problem. “They wished to construct a temple which might final for a thousand years… metal will get corrosion… so when metal shouldn’t be used… the best way to construct the inspiration was the query,” Prof Sitaram recounts.
Pushing conceptual boundaries, they delivered an answer worthy of India’s ambitions—and set a template for future product innovation.
He captures the youthful drive propelling India ahead. “We could not have cash, we could not have funding, however now we have the mind energy, the younger individuals will make [large tech startups] occur.”
He remarks that India has the most important younger inhabitants on this planet. “They’re proficient. They’re first-generation engineers of their households. They’re hungry to be taught and to do one thing.”
This mix of daring imaginative and prescient and boundless power is, he argues, India’s true superpower.
Turning analysis into actuality
Breaking psychological obstacles is just stage one. India should now flip concepts into merchandise that serve society and compete globally.
“Our innovation circle needs to be expanded to develop merchandise. Each scholar ought to turn out to be an entrepreneur. Relatively than a job seeker, they need to be a job giver,” Prof Sitharam urges, calling on tomorrow’s graduates to be innovators and job creators.
Reflecting on his personal journey, he shares, “I’ve been a part of three startups… one firm, which I began from scratch in my space of geotechnical engineering… its presence is there in 4 nations.” It presently employs greater than 150 individuals.
Such experiences present educational prototypes can scale, offered funding, infrastructure, and mentorship develop in tandem.
“If we add cash and infrastructure, we shall be on the high of the world,” he remarks.
Schooling reimagined for innovation
To gas a product-nation, India must reimagine training, and the Nationwide Schooling Coverage 2020 unlocks cross-disciplinary exploration. “There isn’t a compartmentalised training like what we had in our time. College students have a possibility to do what they like to resolve,” explains Prof Sitharam.
This experiential ethos reveals up within the Good India Hackathon, performed by the Ministry of Schooling’s Innovation Cell in partnership with AICTE, which pulls almost 300,000 members, producing prototype options to real-world issues. Concept labs throughout campuses additional instil confidence by way of hands-on initiatives—turning learners into creators.
By collapsing silos between engineering, design and the humanities, NEP 2020 produces graduates fluent in each design pondering and differential equations, able to sort out challenges in agriculture, AI, healthcare and past, the professor believes.
Concurrently, a cultural shift has recast college students as entrepreneurs. “Each scholar ought to turn out to be an entrepreneur… that’s solely doable when he takes his thought to the subsequent degree of applied sciences, processes, merchandise,” he insists.
Below his management, IIT Guwahati’s incubators now nurture ventures from agritech sensors to sustainable power startups.
None of this may scale with out sustained funding. India’s R&D outlay has risen “virtually two and a half instances” over the previous decade. But Prof Sitharam stresses that that is nonetheless beneath what’s aspired.
Fueling India’s innovation engine
India’s self-reliant ethos shines brightest in its ingenuity. “Final 75 years, we had an embargo on area, defence and atomic power… All finished indigenously,” Prof Sitharam celebrates.
From medical isotopes extending grain shelf life to superior nuclear reactors powering cities, these achievements attest that atmanirbhar (self-reliance) is greater than rhetoric—it’s India’s operational mantra.
Remarkably, many breakthroughs emerged from alumni of “second and third grade engineering schools”—together with a major proportion of girls—a testomony to the nation’s huge expertise reservoir and the inclusivity of its innovation ecosystem.
With creativeness as its superpower and ambition as its engine, India’s journey from thought to impression is just simply starting. The groundwork has been laid; the subsequent chapter shall be written by a era unafraid to dream on a worldwide scale.
As Prof Sitharam urges, “We can’t be glad at quantity 5, quantity 4, quantity six. We must be primary. Plenty of work needs to be finished, however we’re doing wonderful work.”
In one other 20 years, India goes to be the vacation spot for the whole world, whether or not it’s for peace of thoughts, yoga, meditation, and even science, engineering, and medication, he asserts.
Edited by Kanishk Singh
