‘Agriculture Sector Can Prove to Be a Game Changer for North Indian Industry’: V P Singh Badnore

By 121 News

Chandigarh 07^th Mar, 2019:- V P Singh Badnore, Governor of Punjab and Administrator, UT Chandigarh while addressing CII North India Business Conference at Chandigarh , said that agriculture sector can prove to be a game changer for North Indian industry. He emphasized upon the need of collaboration between government, industry, academia and various technical institutions to conduct research that can be adapted at the grass root levels in order to achieve the envisioned national goals.

V P Singh Badnore also informed the participants about 'Chandigarh Region Innovation and Knowledge Cluster' which is a body formed with an objective of undertaking industrial research and how such research can be utilized for the improvement Agriculture as well as allied sectors like Food Processing, Logistics, Cold Chain and many more. He urged CII to contribute to this cluster by bringing about critical stakeholders on this futuristic platform.

Rakesh Bharti Mittal, President CII, in his address elaborated upon the various initiatives and activities carried by CII in the past year that especially focused on employment generation and skill enhancement for the youth of India.

He further highlighted that keeping in view the advent of an era of disruptive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Internet of Things, Big Data, etc. we must ensure that the youth of our country is well trained to understand and use these innovations, which would adequately address issues around skills and employment. He stressed that industry should not only partner with academia for recruitment but should also involve educational institutions while they design their curriculum as to what kind of skillset can make the youth more employment ready.

Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII also addressed the gathering and highlighted that CII wants to partner with the State Governments in Northern Region for setting up incubation hubs for start-ups in collaboration between member firms and higher education institutions. CII also wants to open more model career centres in northern region with the help of member firms. He added that the CII Model Career Centre in Gurgaon created approximately 40,000 jobs last year and the same effort should be replicated in the length and breadth of the country.

Sachit Jain, Chairman CII Northern Region expressed his views by saying that we in CII fully share the vision of 'New India' and strive to work closely with concerned state governments and civil society to realize the goals set out under this Mission which is a progressive country in every aspect, be it healthcare, manufacturing, clean cities, energy efficiency and so on.

Sameer Gupta, Vice-President CII Northern Region proposed the formal vote of thanks and louded upon path breaking initiatives of the government such as Jan Dhan Yojana, Ujwala Yojana, Digital India, National Health Protection Scheme, MUDRA Bank, Startup and Standup Programme etc. and added that many of these programmes have started yielding positive results on the ground.