Himanta honours meritorious students for outstanding exam results
Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday honoured 1,534 students from Bezera and Sualkuchi for their exceptional achievements in the HSLC and HS Examinations, 2025, at a ceremony in Changsari, Kamrup district. Addressing the students, Sarma noted that since his election as the MLA for Jalukbari in 2001, he has been celebrating meritorious students. While only 288 students were honoured in 2002, this year the number has risen significantly to 2,116 students.
Calling attention to the world’s rapidly accelerating changes, Sarma stressed that society is constantly evolving, sometimes so quickly that even those who initiate change lag behind. Given increased life expectancy, today’s students may live past 90 years of age and must prepare for numerous transformations during their lifetimes. He cited advances from black-and-white television to colour, then to mobile phones, and now to smartphones and the dominance of artificial intelligence (AI), declaring that the era of mere software is now over.
The Chief Minister highlighted revolutionary changes across sectors. In medicine, treatment has moved from invasive surgery to robot-assisted procedures and from disease prevention to genetic screening, allowing diagnosis of future illnesses. In technology, he noted that AI and machine learning are just the tip of the iceberg, enabling developments like Tesla’s self-driving cars. Sarma cautioned that within 10 to 15 years, many traditional tasks performed by doctors, engineers and teachers could be automated.
Urging students to prepare and stay alert, he emphasised that textbook learning alone does not suffice. Students must align their skills with the human resources required by the future world and choose fields of study relevant to Industry 4.0. The Government is also adapting: Assam’s ITIs are replacing traditional courses with subjects like AI, augmented reality and machine learning. Furthermore, the Government plans to install an advanced proton therapy machine at Guwahati Medical College for cancer treatment and is arranging pump storage systems for solar power to ensure continuous energy supply.
Sarma said that the students who received felicitations possess higher merits than others. Therefore, their responsibilities would also increase. At the end of his speech, he read out the citation presented to the meritorious students. MLA Kamalpur Diganta Kalita, Kamrup District Commissioner Deb Kumar Mishra, noted social worker Riniki Bhuyan Sarma, renowned singer Pulak Banerjee, career counsellor Gouranga Sarma, and a host of other dignitaries were present on the occasion.
