IIT women game for Make in India plan
KANPUR: The first All Woman Alumni meet at the Indian Institute of Technology- Kanpur on Saturday deliberated on how to take forward one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet projects — Make In India. It was decided that IITs should collaborate with other colleges in terms of knowledge sharing and resource participation.
The nearly hour-long session on the scheme dealt with the role of IITs in industrial growth and how women could play a greater role in this programme.
“We want to take forward this initiative on a broader scale... We have a lot of talent and IITs have a pool of knowledge. We need to diversify ourselves a little from our academics and see how our work can be translated for societal needs,” said Tripta Thakur, an alumnus.
Another alumnus, Rupa Mukhopadhyaya, said developing a network with rural women and tapping their skills to create small scale industries with locally found raw material would help village economies. “With some high-end technology support from the relevant members of the alumni and association, these goods may be of exportquality,” she added.
The meet also discussed ways to make women more visible on campus. Traditionally, IIT campuses have very low numbers of women. Studies conducted on this subject reveal that in India there is one female candidate selected for every 8 to 14 men at IIT and other top engineering colleges.