Dr Tessy Thomas, Director of DRDO’s Advanced Systems Laboratory, while speaking at the 23rd Yelavarthy Nayudamma Memorial Award presentation ceremony said that the organisation is eyeing self-reliance by 2020 by establishing several manufacturing hubs, all the while illustrating its leadership in the sector. She emphasised that to achieve the goal of ‘make in India’, self-reliance and indigenisation are vital. She added that DRDO has already chalked out various strategies for development of technology transfer to industry; technology licence production for upgradation and indigenization, concurrent production and procurement to meet the immediate needs and parallel development to achieve self-reliance and consortium of industry and academia.

Another eminent scientist – Geeta Varadan, Director of the Advanced Data Processing Research Institute of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) who was present at the event and delivered a lecture on ‘Remote Sensing Technology for National Needs’ and stated that remote sensing technologies are becoming increasingly relevant to the society at large as they offer an “end to end” solution for a variety of national needs. Varadan said that remote sensing had also opened up avenues for servicing many time-critical applications like flood inundation estimation for relief operations, landslide hazard mapping and resulting damage assessment, early warning of cyclone in the onset to take precautionary measures to reduce life risks to human and livestock resources.

By Premji