THEME: ENGINEERING CHALLENGES FOR KNOWLEDGE ERA
September 15 is celebrated every year in the country as “Engineer’s Day” to commemorate the birthday of the legendary engineer Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya.
Sir Visvesvaraya, an eminent Indian engineer and statesman was born in a remote village of Karnataka, the State that is incidentally now the Hitech State of the country. Due to his outstanding contribution to the society, Government of India conferred “Bharat Ratna” on this legend in the year 1955. He was also called the precursor of economic planning in India.
His learned discourse on economic planning in India, Planned Economy for India and Reconstructing India, was the first available document on the planning effort of the country and it is still held as the parent source matter for economic planners.
A theme of national importance is chosen every year by the National Council of the Institution and deliberated at its various State/Local Centres to educate the engineering fraternity in general and the society in particular.
This year the National Council of the Institution has selected the theme as “Engineering Challenges for Knowledge Era”.
Tremendous developments are taking place in science, technology and engineering world over and the knowledge has become the new currency of national economics. Engineers have a pre-eminent role in the knowledge economy.
Innovation of new products and processes form the core of new knowledge which has to be governed by intellectual property rights related safe guards including applicability of Cyber loss.
Changing technologies, disruptive technologies and path breaking technological developments will have to be mastered exploited in all engineering disciplines.
Promoting research and development, nurturing entrepreneurship and succeeding in making world class products all will form major activities in this regard. Further interdisciplinary team efforts are needed to succeed in mapping the benefits of knowledge economy.
Technology manpower planning in the networked economy hinges on developing base of skilled and knowledgeable manpower of high caliber to usher in a talent-drive economic revolution.
Both the Industry and Academia has equal responsibility to share to ensure that the engineers become ready to face the growing and ever-changing need in this knowledge era. IEI has an important role in this endeavour.
The theme chosen for Engineer’s Day 2015 celebrations “Engineering challenges for Knowledge Era” will address all these aspects.