Prime Minister Narendra Modi said there are lot of opportunities available for diaspora of global Indian IT professionals to give back to their home country.
Mr. Modi was interacting with a team from Chennai-based Cognizant through video conference after launching the “Main Nahin Hum” (I to WE) portal and app on Wednesday.
The portal, which works on the theme “Self4Society”, will enable IT professionals and organisations to bring together their efforts towards social causes, and service to society, on one platform.
Talk with industry
As a part of the launch, Mr. Modi also interacted with IT and electronic manufacturing professionals and Industry captains across India.
Mangal Nates, Senior Associate, Cognizant, who has volunteered to support differently-abled people for over 7 years now, also interacted with the Prime Minister.
He pointed out that Cognizant employees support differently-abled people in Paralympic sports.
“My colleague, Thayu is one of the coaches for the Indian wheelchair basketball team. He started to volunteer by providing logistics support and help the wheelchair basketball players to reach the venue from their homes,” Mr. Nates told Mr. Modi in the interaction.
He narrated that Thayu then became a coach himself and now coaches the Tamil Nadu State and Indian national teams.
Some of the players who were part of the Indian team, which won the Bronze medal last year at Bali, Indonesia, were present at the event.
Mr. Nates asked the Prime Minister how techies who retire early in their mid-40s to early 50s and also large diaspora of global Indian information technology professionals who want to contribute to social causes back home through Skype and other cloud channels can start using this platform and start volunteering for social causes?
In reply, Mr. Modi acknowledged the need for tapping the diaspora.
The Prime Minister also pointed out the number of opportunities.
MHRD scheme
He said the Ministry of Human Resources Development has a scheme where both Indian and foreign nationals can volunteer for teaching either for 6 months or one year.
The Prime Minister also said there are opportunities available in the MyGov.in and Narendra modi app for them to contribute based on their talent and skills.
Deepak Prabhu, Global head, Cognizant Outreach, said that out of the 185,000 employees in Cognizant, over 40,000 are active volunteers, many of them volunteering every week.