Cadila Pharma CMD Rajiv Modi | IIT Guwahati Convocation | 2018

Good morning. Dr. Satyapal Singh ji, Honourable Minister of State for Human Resources Development, Higher Education, Government of India. Welcome members of the Board of Governors, members of the Senate, faculty members, invited dignitaries, guests, my loving graduate students and their family members, members of the media, officers, staff, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very excited this morning to extend my greetings and a warm welcome to all of you, students, parents, teachers, to the 20th convocation of this great budding institute, the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. On behalf of the Board of Governors and the faculty, I heartily welcome Honourable Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Higher Education, Dr. Satyapal Singh ji, who has taken a lot of effort from his busy schedule to come stay with us and excite us this morning with his words of wisdom. Thank you, thank you, Minister. Most importantly, I welcome the proud parents of the budding new generation, class of 2018, IIT Guwahati. I am so excited to see all of you smile and take a leap into the new world. Over the years at the institute, we have handled a lot of challenges. Our challenge to attract the best of brains, the best of students from India and possibly the world, in our vision to build this great institute as a center of excellence for the world. We, the faculty and the Board of Governors, have been working very hard together to enhance innovation, to enhance and evolve behavioral studies for all of you who are studying here to face this new challenging world, this new world which is evolving, societies which are mixing, economies which are protective, economies which want to protect their citizens, geographies which are changing. All these new challenges in a very rapidly accelerating social digital world of the future. And I am sure that the four years and more that undergraduate students have spent on this wonderful campus have helped them to enhance their character and their understanding of how to face the new world. I am confident that the academic program that you have witnessed, you worked hard day and night and sometimes non-stop, have helped enable you to take the next step forward, to be a future contributing citizen of India and citizen of the world. We at IIT Guwahati are endeavoring to enhance the standard of our institute by working with all the faculty members and their peers and their colleagues and their research associates to enhance the curriculum of the undergraduate and the research programs, to enhance ways by which research will attract a lot of grants so that we can afford and construct futuristic sophisticated laboratories and research equipment so that people like you can come participate and endeavor in this journey of research and voyage of innovation. It has been my trust to try and increase the collaborations between our faculty members and the industry. It is only when research gets applied and is used by the common man that research becomes realistic. In the new India which is emerging for all of us, there are tremendous opportunities. The new government has evoked and unleashed the tremendous potential that our great nation India, Bharat, Hindustan has looked for, has put forward for us. There are exciting times in our country, ladies and gentlemen. My dear colleagues, we in India are in a momentous period where we are so proud of our country, our country where things are going to start happening. India will be emerging as one of the leading not only economic powers over the next decade but also as a center of excellence. So it is with this vision that our leadership in our country has worked so hard and dedicated resources to create centers like the IIT Guwahati which in a way is quite far away and tucked away in the eastern part of India to emerge as a center which will be praised and hopefully over the next 10 to 20 years will become one of the leading universities of India. So it is with this vision that we are all working. We are so proud of all of you. On my behalf and behalf of all of the faculty, I wish each and every student, master student, undergraduate student, and PhD the very best in their careers. We wish and pray that the hard work and the dedication that your parents have done for you, your friends, your colleagues, your mentors have actually put their lives to build you, help you to build into a wonderful exemplary citizen whom we will all be proud of as you grow and develop in this career. So once again, I'm very excited to be happy to be here on the 20th convocation of IIT Guwahati. Thank you, Professor Biswas, for giving a long and extended lecture on telling us all the wonderful things that all the faculty members and you have been doing here. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, my dear parents and students, wish you the best in life. May all the wonderful things happen to you. Thank you.