State needs new perspectives on development: Pinarayi

Kerala Development and Innovation Strategic Council comes into being

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan greets Sashi Tharoor, MP, at the inaugural ceremony of the Kerala Development and Innovation Strategic Council in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday. State Planning Board vice chairman V.K. Ramachandran looks on. PHOTO: S. Gopakumar

Kerala is on the lookout for out of the box solutions for its development challenges, upholding its traditions of democracy, secularism and equity, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said.

He was speaking after launching the strategic think-tank and advisory body Kerala Development and Innovation Strategic Council (K-DISC) here on Saturday.

Infrastructure deficit

“The State is facing decades of infrastructure deficit. It has to address all these challenges within its precarious fiscal constraint and keeping in view its fragile environment. The human resource potential is unmatched. It is in this context that the government has reconstituted the Kerala State Innovation Council and established K-DISC,” said the Chief Minister said.

He said K-DISC was simply not a change in name or leadership but a comprehensive change in its functional mechanism with extended responsibilities to assist the State in facing challenges and in preparing the new generation in taking up these challenges.

“The mandate of the body has been enlarged from developing an information ecosystem to going beyond and developing innovation as an engine of prosperity. The State has identified tough challenges in waste management, building cost-effective shelter, ensuring affordable health care, raising quality of school education, making good use of its resources and developing industries around it. The K-DISC should be able to bring innovators together in all these areas and coordinate with the government’s four flagship missions and the departments working on it,” Mr. Vijayan said.

Shashi Tharoor, MP, said: “The K-DISC should look at the prospect of strengthening the ecosystem for knowledge industry in the State capital. The State should encourage Indian innovators to come to Kerala by giving them the conditions in which they can do the innovative work which they do overseas. The focus should be innovations that are socially useful.”

Anil Kumar Gupta, Chairman, National Innovation Foundation, said that Kerala should come up with a test procurement policy to provide funding to test prototypes developed by innovators.

The Chief Minister also launched the Young Innovators Programme. A technical session was held on Blockchain Technology and the ways it can be used in governance. Another section highlighted the plans to position Kerala as a medical device and technology hub.