Sanjay Dhotre, MoS for Education, Communications, Electronics and IT said that materials are the backbone of the manufacturing sector in the country and that India’s electronics manufacturing has grown from Rs 1.90 lakh crore to Rs 5.33 lakh crore in recent years.
He was delivering the inaugural address organised at an event to mark the 30th foundation day of the city-headquartered Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology (C-MET), which operates under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
” In 2014 – 2015, the manufacturing of mobile phones was worth about Rs 6 crore which in 2019 – 2020, grew to Rs 33 crore. From contributing approximately 1.3 per cent in 2012, the share of mobile phone manufacturing has increased to 3.6 per cent during 2019 – 2020. This growth has opened employability for thousands,” said Dhotre.
“With the Centre pushing for being Atmanirbhar in all sectors, the country needs to be greatly involved in materials technology, ” said Vijay Bhatkar, Vice Chancellor, Nalanda University.
” In the past, India had not done significant research on electronics hardware, which is entirely dependent upon materials technology,” said Bhatkar, who led India’s supercomputer programme in the 1990s.
NITI Aayog member VK Saraswat too stressed the urgent requirement for developing technology to develop materials within India and cut imports.
” We need focused efforts to develop technology for producing functional materials. It has been observed that whenever there is a need for some materials, India imports them. It is high time that India develop technology to manufacture some materials like a silicon wafer, multi-crystalline silicon, silicon oxide,” said Saraswat.
On the occasion of International Womens’ Day, Jyoti Arora, special secretary and financial advisor, MeitY, highlighted the importance of sustained support for women to pursue STEM as a career.
” In India, the number of women taking up higher education or doctoral studies in STEM remains meagre. Though there are multifactorial reasons, women in leadership roles, too, are very few,” said Arora, who urged the NITI Aayog and Department of Science and Technology to continue their women-centric programmes for those scientists with a career break due to family responsibilities or maternity.
