TIRUPATI: The oceans surrounding the Indian peninsula are going to be the next ‘Exclusive Economic Zone’, if the words of Prime Minister Narendra Modi are any indication.
While the 7,500-km-long coastline has always been dubbed as an “untapped asset”, the identification of 1,300-plus islands around the peninsula and the 2.4 million sq. km of area in this zone as having the potential to influence the nation's economy has kindled enough interest on this ‘Exclusive Economic Zone’.
Mr. Modi, at the 104th Indian Science Congress here on Tuesday, referred to the project taken up by the Ministry of Earth Sciences to launch a Deep Ocean Mission to explore, understand and harness this resource in a responsible way. The Prime Minister exuded confidence on tapping the enormous opportunities in energy, food, medicine and other natural resources. “The ocean economy should be a significant dimension of our sustainable future,” he said.
Mr. Modi felicitated Nobel laureates Ada E. Yonath (Israel), Willian E. Moerner (U.S.), Jean Tirole (France), Takaaji Kajita (Japan), Serge Haroche (France) and Muhammad Yunus (Bangladesh).
He also presented Asutosh Mookerjee memorial award to ISCA former General-President Ashok Kumar Saxena, C.V. Raman birth centenary award to Mangalore University Vice-Chancellor K. Byrappa, S.K. Mitra birth centenary award to AIIMS NMR head N.R. Jagannathan, Birbal Sahani birth centenary award to Manipur University Earth Sciences professor Arun Kumar, D.S. Kothari memorial award to Apollo Hospitals interventional cardiologist I. Satyamurthy, Prof. R.C. Mehrotra memorial lifetime achievement award to West Bengal University of Technology emeritus professor B.P. Chatterjee and millennium plaques of honour to Appa Rao Podile and Avula Damodaram, the respective Vice-Chancellors of University of Hyderabad and Sri Venkateswara University.
Terming demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) as the “biggest economic reforms” post-Independence, Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu predicted that the bold step would curtail tax evasion, parallel economy, terrorism, corruption and usher in political reforms. He explained that the easy-to-adopt cashless technology introduced through biometric facility was the first in the world.
Union Minister for Science and Technology Harsh Vardhan appealed to the scientific fraternity to leave a “high impact factor’ on society at large, while hailing the nation’s progress in fields as varied as drug discovery to genomics, atomic energy to agriculture and Mars mission to meteorological services.
Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA) General-President D. Narayana Rao pointed to chronic under-funding and under-staffing as impacting quality of research.