India is on a mission to expand its global engagement taking advantage of its excellent manufacturing experience, high-quality talent and cutting-edge advanced technology attainments, President Droupadi Murmu declared on Thursday.

”There are many critical areas where international collaboration in engineering and technology would bring about changes to make the world a prosperous and safer place for the posterity,” she said inaugurating the International Engineering and Technology Fair (IETF) 2023 in New Delhi.

India, the president said, has an immense potential to engage with the international markets. ”Our commitment to clean energy has been driving our green growth. India has been marching ahead steadfastly to attain the net zero emission target in 2070,” she added.

Elaborating on the experience of the country in the field, the president said that India has come a long way in the 48 years since the first IETF, and the engineering industry has achieved new heights during this period. Today, it was a robust, multi-level, diversified segment of India’s industry, playing a critical role in driving growth, creating jobs, and boosting exports.

”The policies adopted in the recent past have given a fillip to unprecedented inclusive growth. Rapid digitisation of the economy and its acceptance at the social level has unleashed a new potential which has created new pathways for high growth,” she added

Noting that IETF-2023 covers 11 areas of emerging technologies that would have a profound impact on the country’s economy and society, President Murmu said there was no doubt that technology was going to change the way people live.

”We should strive to use technology for social change. Any technology that confines itself to a section of people would gradually wither away. On the other hand, the technologies that change the lives of ordinary people in a positive manner get traction. The wide acceptance of the world’s biggest digitisation drive in India was a prime example of the society readily embracing technologies that brought about positive changes in people’s lives,” she said.

The president expressed her happiness to note that there was a determined attempt in IETF-2023 to showcase feats of engineering and technologies that promote harmony between nature and science. She said that human ingenuity should be put to its best use when it was oriented to nourish nature. She said that if the knowledge of science was combined with the pursuit of spirituality, it could do miracles.