Universities should be navigators in eliminating poverty: President Ram Nath Kovind

CHENNAI: President Ram Nath Kovind on Saturday said as India was looking to become a developed society and to urgently eliminate poverty as well as ensuring healthcare, education, housing and energy access for the people, universities such as Madras University are expected to be the navigators. “Simultaneously, our country is seeking to meet the opportunities as well as the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution — of robotics, genomics and Artificial Intelligence. Institutions in Tamil Nadu have shown commendable agility in nurturing an ecosystem that helps engineers and other qualified youth to become entrepreneurs and job creators,” he said.

He was delivering the 160th convocation address of the University of Madras. He heaped praise on the University of Madras for being cornerstone of nation-building from the middle of the 19th century and being the only university in the country that saw six of its alumni occupy the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Kovind said the Madras University was among the institutions responsible for the strong foundations of education, intellectual advance and knowledge production in India, particularly in the south. “I am told that in the region, it is popularly referred to as the “Mother of Universities”. It is truly a monumental institution and I am not referring to just the imposing heritage buildings on this campus.

“There is a remarkable list of nation-builders who have been alumni of this university or of its constituent colleges. No other university in India can make the claim that six former Presidents – six of my distinguished predecessors – are old students. S. Radhakrishnan, VV Giri, Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, R Venkataraman, KR Narayanan and APJ Abdul Kalam all studied here before eventually graduating to the highest office in Rashtrapati Bhavan,” he said.