'Science necessary for country's overall growth and development'

From a Correspondent

JORHAT, FEB 28: “Oil India Limited (OIL) had started exploration in Mizoram which is a mountainous region. We are very positive to give momentum, to go commercial and to be very successful in the long run and the company can get good profit,” said Bedanta P Sharma, Residential Chief Executive, OIL, Duliajan during his guest of honour speech on the occasion of tiol Science Day in CSIR- NEIST at Jorhat here on Wednesday.

Sharma said that during the 1980s and 1990s, OIL had lot of collaboration with the then RRL, now NEIST, but over the years some schemes had stopped all of a sudden. “If the industry and research do not work hand-in-hand, we cannot expect much success. We took the initiative in 2016 and had a conference in Guwahati and invited all the universities of the Northeast to have collaborated projects with our industry,” he said.

He said as a follow up of this conference last year, OIL signed MoUs with four universities - galand, Manipur, Gauhati and Dibrugarh for carrying out geological service in difficult areas. These are big projects and will continue till two years with other academic projects.

“We have tied-up with Dibrugarh University to carry out many projects throughout the year and in fact we are sponsoring K T Malaviya Chair at Dibrugarh University and I am sure to have collaborative projects with NEIST soon,” he said.

Renowned scientist from Indian Science Centre, Prof S. Chandrasekaran from Bangalore who attended as the chief guest and spoke on the topic ‘Science and Scientist’, reiterated the theme of this year’s tiol Science Day celebration which is ‘Science and technology for Sustaible Future’ and spoke about how science was pertinent to all sections of the society and for the country’s overall growth and development. He also touched upon several aspects of the life of a scientist and his role in the society and emphasized upon cultivating the right attitude and mentioned various attributes that scientists should inculcate.

The tiol Science Day lecture was presided over by Dr. D Ramaiah, Director of NEIST, in presence of Dr. Piki Sengupta, Dr. Rajesh Prasad and Dr. NJ Bordoloi, heads from various departments, young scientists, research associates, and students.