Let Scientists and Technologists decide agenda for India: Expert

Bangalore, Jul 2 (UNI) Scientists and Engineers should set their own agenda for the country and not depend on those formulated by the government agencies, noted scientist Arcot Ramachandran said today.

Speaking at the inauguration of IISc Centenary International Conference on Advances in Mechanical Engineering here, he said energy being the major issue the Indian engineers should focus on developing next generation power technologies that aids the poor and fight environmental hazards.

"Experts should be independent of government and focus their attention to country's needs. Water and power will be the most important issues for the new generation engineers to look into.

Efficient use of energy and cheap alternatives for power generation, which are environment friendly, should be their watch word," he said.

The IIT-Madras founder said that coal would continue to be important for power generation but there should be a major change its use to bring down emission. However it was time to increase penetration of renewable energy alternatives in energy spectrum.

"Coal will remain important till 2050. Engineers involved in R and D for clean coal technology will face material challenges," he said.

He said when nuclear energy was being 'emphasised' in Europe and Asia, the country was neglecting it.

As technologies advancing emphasise was shifting from high carbon content fuel to high hydrogen content fuel to even pure hydrogen.

"However for the next few decades fossils fuel will stay with high emphasis on LNG," he felt.

Prof Ramachandran, former IISc Director, said the country need to develop scientists in advanced geophysical techniques for precise location of fossil fuel. "Unfortunately we are witnessing engineers in geophysics, mining, mechanical, chemical streams leave for other fields. The country need a very strong force in these disciplines," he added.

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