'Engineering education should be made holistic'

Engineering education in the country should be made holistic to create new and enhance the existing industrial leadership, S Ramadorai, chief executive officer and managing director of Tata Consultancy Services, said.

He was delivering the inaugural address of 46th foundation day of IIT-Mumbai last evening.

Emphasising the role of IIT-Mumbai in creating industrial leadership, Ramadorai said: "It might be worthwhile to make engineering education holistic."

Welcoming the decision to offer pure sciences, humanities and linguistics at IIT, Ramadorai talked about the various ways in which IIT Mumbai and TCS partner in research such as the VLSI Lab, Intelligent Internet Lab, and programme for instrumentation system for healthcare set up at IIT-Mumbai by TCS.

Ashok Misra, director, IIT Mumbai, officially launched the efforts for the oney-year golden jubilee celebrations, which takes place between March 11, 2007 and March 11, 2008 and presented IIT Mumbai's future aims such as creating better infrastructure, new buildings and attracting more faculty and research scholars, so that IIT Mumbai becomes a globally renowned institution by the next decade.

During the function, S C Sahasrabuddhe, former depuy director of the institute, was presented with a lifetime achievement award in recognition of his contribution as a great teacher and researcher-engineer in the country.

Alumnus awards were also presented to Manthiram Natarajan, secretary, department of defence R&D and scientific advisor to defence minister. Natarajan was the programme director of DRDO when it developed the indigenous battle tank 'Arjun'.