Maharashtra CM Fadnavis advocates autonomy for educational institutes to build global competence

NEW DELHI: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Sunday pitched for the autonomy of good educational institutes to create competent human resources, and said that India will be the world’s leading AI developer country by 2030. He was addressing an event at the Laxminarayan Institute of Technology (LIT) in Nagpur. Amid an impressive growth of the Indian economy, there is a need for globally capable human resources, he said.

“To fulfil this requirement, we will also need to make our (educational) institutions globally competent,” he said. However, globally competent institutions cannot be built by “tying their hands and feet”, he said. Good educational facilities cannot be built if they depend on someone for carrying out their work, said Fadnavis. “If we need good institutions, they must be given autonomy, flexibility and opportunity to fly,” he said.

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When he first became the CM in 2014, Fadnavis said, he decided to give autonomy to good institutes. “Hence, we gave autonomy to institutions like LIT,” he said. The CM said that energy transition and green jobs will be important in the future. He also pitched for innovations at universities. Underlining the need to adopt AI in one’s work, he said it cannot replace human intelligence.

Fadnavis also recalled his meeting with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who told him that, based on current trends, India would become the world’s leading AI developer by 2030 Emphasising natural farming, he said the Maharashtra government is working on a ‘Natural Farming’ mission under which it aims to bring at least 25 lakh hectares of land under natural farming over the next two to three years.