Shri Prithviraj Chavan Union Minister for Science&Technology and Earth Sciences said that India could overcome its challenges of energy, food, terrorism, and climate change through scientific collaboration with Commonwealth nations.

Addressing the inaugural session on a discussion on "Commonwealth in 21st Century" here yesterday organized by the Commonwealth Journalists Association, India Chapter and the Royal Commonwealth Society, London, Shri Chavan said that India's strength lies in its knowledge power and that it should strive to achieve the goal of a knowledge-based economy.

India faces a number of challenges in terms of "food security, political challenge of terrorism, climate change, education and self sufficiency in energy" and these can be resolved with the help of a "knowledge driven economy based on science and innovations," said the minister.

He added that it should be the effort of everyone to communicate science to the common man. Farmers need to know when it will rain in his field, so weather prediction technology, which is a difficult task, needs to be improved.

Elaborating the mission under National Action Plan on Climate Change he said that this mission tries to put a cap over the carbon emission sources by refining both the appliances and the fuels. This includes the regular checks on the grey levels of the smoke emitted from factory chimneys, discouraging use of long chain plastic, and water conservation.

Highlighting the importance of regional arrangements between nations, Shri Chavan said that Commonwealth has been a unique system. Today when nations are scrambling to form regional arrangements Commonwealth has shown the way.

Emphasizing the need for creation of innovation based knowledge economies through deeper cooperation within commonwealth countries he said that Scientific development and technological innovations would help us find answers to global issues like HIV, swine flu, external terrorism, climate change and other emerging threats.

Source : Press Information Bureau
Date : September 28, 2009