By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, AUGUST 19, 2020: THE Vice President, Mr M Venkaiah Naidu, yesterday called upon researchers and scientists to pay greater attention to agriculture and come up with innovations to address the problems faced by farmers.

Speaking at the online ARIIA-2020 (Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievements) Awards Ceremony at Upa-Rashtrapati Nivas today, Mr Naidu said from providing timely information on various issues to farmers to creating cold storage facilities and supplying new technologies should be the focus of innovators and researchers.

He stressed the need for preventing farmers' exploitation by middlemen and ensuring remunerative prices for their produce. He said the AICTE, ICAR, NIRD and agriculture universities should work in unison to bring new innovations and technologies to farmers.   

Emphasizing the need for India's higher education system to play the role of an enabler and force-multiplier to drive Indian innovation and start-up ecosystem, the Vice President said " Innovation must become the heartbeat of education. Quest for excellence must become the norm".

Urging educational institutions to reinvent themselves to create these essential conditions for innovation to thrive and creativity to blossom, Mr Naidu said that our educational eco-system must constantly nurture the innate spirit of inquiry and innovative problem-solving.

Expressing his happiness that the New National Education Policy has made a number of recommendations that will foster innovation, he said "It has outlined a new vision that can vastly improve the quality of teaching and learning as well as research".

The Vice President said the policy lays great emphasis on comprehension, critical thinking, analysis and the joy of discovering new facets of the world of knowledge. "It seeks to break the silos and connect different disciplines through multi-disciplinary learning. Establishing this connection between fragments of information and evidence is truly vital for innovation", he stressed.

Mr Naidu called for concerted efforts to inculcate the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship among our students to make them ‘out of the box' thinkers, creative problem solvers, entrepreneurs, and job creators rather than job seekers.