PM exhorts students to combine career and country’s goals

Pune, March 6 (IANS): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday urged students to combine their career and country’s goals and find lasting solutions for local problems to spur the country’s progress.

Modi said whatever field a student is pursuing, he/she must have some goals for the country on the same lines as they set for their personal career.

“When our goals go from personal to national growth, then the feeling of being a participant in the nation building process takes over,” he added, addressing the golden jubilee of Symbiosis International University.

The Prime Minister asked the student community to select an annual theme based on national or global needs like climate change on which they could work round the year, along with their other assignments, and find practical solutions for the larger public good.

“In the next 25 years till you reach your platinum jubilee celebrations, you will have at least 25 themes on which thousands of creative minds have worked to provide workable solutions. You can also share the ideas and results with the Prime Minister’s Office,” Modi said.

He urged the student community to take full advantage of the opening of various sectors like geo-spatial systems, drones, semi-conductors and space technology for the betterment of the country and humanity.

“Today we have emerged as global leaders in sectors which were previously considered out of reach. Seven years ago, there were only two mobile manufacturing companies but now India is the second-largest mobile manufacturer in the world with more than 200 companies engaged in it. Once the country was the largest defence importer, but now it is becoming an exporter,” he added.

The Prime Minister inaugurated the Symbiosis Arogya Dham — comprising the Symbiosis Medical College for Women, the first-of-a-kind residential medical college for girls in Maharashtra, in presence of Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari, the College Director S.B. Mujumdar, and other dignitaries.

The 900-bed Symbiosis University Hospital and Research Centre is attached to the Symbiosis Medical College for Women, with a series of streams in the integrated Symbiosis Arogya Dham, spread over 70 acres at Lavale.

Established in a modest way 50 years ago by S.B. Mujumdar, the Symbiosis is now a teeming multi-disciplinary academic hub with campuses spread in Pune, Nashik, Nagpur, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Noida, with more than 45,000 students from India and 85 other countries.