Indian Youth should take up International Arbitration where there is scope of increasing India’s representation: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman

Mumbai, 24 February 2024

First Complete digital campus where hybrid learning is possible is a noteworthy thing and it is impressive that an institute which just started as a Pathshala has grown in strength to have 5^th campus today with one of the campus being in Dubai. It has given 7400 CEOs to the Fortune 500 companies, said Finance Minister while inaugurating 5^th Campus of Birla Institute of Technology in Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) today. It will be the 5th Campus of the institute after Pilani, Goa, Hyderabad and Dubai.

India’s growing Startup industries have largely benefitted from BITS institutions. Minister also praised the practice of 125 crore rupees given by in-house promoters of BITS in the form of scholarships. BITS is an example of culture of charity existing in India, said Finance Minister.

BITS has given 6400 start-ups to India of which 13 Unicorns and 2 decacorns.

Smt. Sitharaman further said that “170 start-ups were incubated in BITS campus which shows how BITS is playing the role of catalyst. 17,800 academic publications from BITS show culture of research that is encouraged in BITS. Indian government is giving a big push to Semiconductor sector and Minister showed happiness over the presence of separate semiconductor department in BITS Pilani.”

Finance Minister mentioned the 1 lakh crore corpus created in recent interim budget for Research and innovation Special purpose vehicle and appealed all to take benefit from it.

Minister went on to praise the Artificial Intelligence initiative in BITS Pilani which is working on message to video conversion using AI and hoped that it will be available to market in affordable way for usage.

Smt. Sitharaman further said that Government of India is working with 5 principles and they can be a topic for case study. These 5 principles are:

‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance’
Whole of Government Approach
User Feedback and Grievance Redressal
Output-Outcome Monitoring Framework
Kaizen

Minister appealed students to take up the research on how the covid pandemic, two wars and piracy in high seas have affected India’s supply chain.

“Even the success of Covid vaccines and use of Digital public infrastructure for generating covid vaccine certificates are ideal subjects for case study. Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) is doing wonders in addressing public grievances and ensures that they do not get accumulated,” minister added.

Minister also elaborated on improved technological co-ordination among centre and state whereby the taxpayers’ money is utilized without any delay and Outcome-output from it are monitored by Niti Ayog.

“67 government departments are using outcome-output framework for over 600 central government schemes.” Informed the minister.

Minister hoped that India will find trained professional who can work in International Arbitrational boards. She further said the government believes in using the law as enabling tools and not as tools of harassment.

Chancellor of BITS institutes Shri Kumar Mangalam Birla said on this occasion that “5th campus of BITS Pilani marks the glorious journey of an esteemed organization. IT has 18000 students across 4 campuses. It has instilled in generations capacity to dream ambitiously, think criticially and strive relentlessly. It has given thousands of entrepreneurs to India and the world.

* * *

PIB Mumbai | JPS/MC/DR