Guwahati: A two-day brainstorming workshop, which began on March 14, Technology Vision 2047, was organised by the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IIT-G) in collaboration with Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC), New Delhi.

The thematic areas for this session were food and agriculture, energy, climate change and disaster management, human and animal health, education, and skill development, and industry.

Dr. Utpal Bora of the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering and Head of Centre for Environment at IIT-G said it was an exercise of the Centre for preparing Technology Vision 2047. It will be the third such document.

The first technology vision document, Vision 2020, was prepared under the chairmanship of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. The next technology vision was prepared under the chairmanship of Prof (Dr) Anil Kakodkar, the Chairman of the Department of Atomic Energy. That was Technology Vision 2035.

Now, it has been felt that many technological changes have come up in the last few years and there is a need to recalibrate the technology roadmap.

Besides, in 2047, the country will be celebrating its hundred years of its political independence.

“Having a vision document will have some kind of pull factor. We will be able to develop many technologies which will be very critical for this country”, said Dr. Bora.

Earlier, the country has been successful in developing technologies of very high end. For example, it was successful in developing nuclear capabilities, missile capabilities, etc. In the area of space research, it has been quite successful in developing Chandrayan, Mangalayan. Now, it is planning to mission fast astronauts with its own indigenous capabilities.
Bora informed that there have been much push and pull factors that would make the nation capable. Now, this technology vision is trying to set a dream of that kind. It is one of the regional consultative meetings.

“It is because availing a vision document for a big country like India with so many diverse geographical location, complexities and diverse people you cannot do it centrally. The Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC) has started to organised regional consultative meetings. This meeting is for Northeast,” he said.
“We have a slogan ‘Technology Vision- 2047’, priorities for the North East,” he added.

The nation as a whole has many problems which require technological solutions. For that we have taken up six broad thematic groups like food and agriculture, and energy. In the changed global scenario, lot of focus has been given on green energy. The tendency is to shift away from fossil energy.

Other important sectors are disaster management, climate change, etc. Important sectors like human-animal health is also present. In the northeast, animals are linked to important economic activities.

Other things like education and skill development is another thematic area. All experts are making various technical concept notes whereby they are trying to identify key issues for the North East. They are developing a set of pointers. Those pointers are a package of practices that are suggested for the northeast in the future.

“The final one as a thematic area wherein they are putting up a discussion is industry. Industrialism is important. The region has low industrialization. That is the region, a large population is migrating away from northeast. “If we are successful in developing certain futuristic technology-based industries, we will be able to solve our old problems and also add to the national income as well as contribute to exports. With that, we can become a very healthy economy. So, these are some of the thrust of this workshop,” confirmed Bora.

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