Universities by the very definition are a universe of knowledge, said the former secretary of Ministry of Higher Education, Government of India Vibha Puri Dass, adding that this knowledge needs to be leveraged by all sections of our society. She was addressing the inaugural session of three—day International Conference on Management of Infrastructure ICMI-2016 at College of Management and Economics Studies, UPES, Dehradun on Friday.
While sharing her experiences in education sector at the Central Government level, she said that educational institutions like UPES have great potential of contributing towards sustainable development of the society, in general, and the State Government, in particular, Dass said.
President of UPES, Utpal Ghosh dwelt at length over energy scenarios of India while also throwing some light on the energy sector of Uttarakhand. He said that UPES has the intellectual capital to be able to contribute towards the development of Uttarakhand in areas of Energy, Infrastructure and Transportation and would soon initiate some proposals to collaborate with the State Government.
Renowned economist and former member, Planning Commission, Dr Kirit S Parik who is also the emeritus professor and founder director of IGIDR in his extremely informative address gave a deep insight on some very relevant issues pertaining to long- term energy security of India, including geo-political factors.
He advocated that in a country like India the various available energy resources though need to be synergized with one another but the resource best suited as per the local geography needs to be deployed and for or a State like Uttarakhand the hydro power resource is best suited.
lauding UPES for selecting the theme of the conference, he said that he has always believed that “Managing the existing infrastructures is more important as creating new ones”. Giving a classic example of why management of Infrastructure is important, he narrated that about twenty years back the installed capacity of producing steel in India was 13 million tonnes per annum. But we are producing only 8 million tonnes, simply because the existing installed infrastructure lacked efficient management,” he said.
Arun Dhand, director- media affairs, UPES said that the second of conference would also feature Chipko movement. The famed and Eminent Environmentalist Sunderlal Bahuguna would conduct the key note session on Environment –“Environmental Challenges in Hydro Power”, he said.