Dr. Anil Kakodkar - Former Director BARC

We now present to you with the keynote address from Dr. Anil Kakodkar, Padma Vibhushan, former Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, and Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Atomic Energy. He is also a former Director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. Dr. Kakodkar is an eminent nuclear scientist and has worked for the development of the atomic energy program in India throughout his professional life. Apart from playing a major role major role in India's nuclear tests asserting sovereignty, Kakodkar champions India's self-reliance on thorium as a fuel for nuclear energy. Currently, he is Homi Bhabha Chair Professor at BARC. Dr. Kakodkar devotes his time primarily on issues related to energy, education, and societal development.

Good evening. Tata Consulting Engineers is an organization organization where I have plenty of contacts and contacts which are lasting decades. A mention was made about the knowledge-based activity that TCE represents. You have a motto, Engineering a Better Tomorrow, and as we enter the knowledge era, I think organizations like Tata Consulting Engineers have to necessarily play bigger and bigger role in shaping the new India or for that matter shaping the new world. Let me begin by reminiscing some of my old associations with Tata Consulting Engineers. I remember a heated discussion. He's not here, but one of the colleagues from Tata Consulting Engineers, Mr. PK Roy Chowdhury, and I of course was very thick with him because we had an opportunity to work together to design reactor Dhruva, which in itself was the only one of its kind. Mind, nothing to copy, everything to be conceptualized here. And as a part of that debate, I remember the— it was a discussion around civil engineering, but then came the beauty from Roy Choudhury, and he said, look here, there is something called designer's horse sense. And he said, "I am the designer, not you," and the horse sense should prevail. So the short point I'm making is, although we talk about things driven by knowledge, but that horse sense or the right sense or the common sense is as much a part of the knowledge activity, and it doesn't come so easily. And for me, it was that much additional learning that day. Your motto, "Engineering a Better Tomorrow." It seems to me that, you know, engineering is not just putting together a design calculation or putting together a set of drawings and documents and give it to clients. Engineering is more fundamental and engineering a better India, engineering tomorrow, they convey connotations much larger than the normal engineering output that one talks about. You are in power, energy, you are in infrastructure and I think I would urge all of you that next 50 years as we move up on your business I think there are huge opportunities. You may have to educate the decision makers, you may have to educate the people at large, but I think there is a huge appetite for taking India forward in the right direction, and I think organizations like Tata Consulting Engineers have, in my view, a great role to play. I'm quite aware of the technical competencies that exist in Tata Consulting Engineers. Engineers, and they have been growing day by day. And I am very sure that TCE would scale much greater heights than it has already scaled. And on this occasion, the 50 years of this great institution, let me extend my heartiest compliments to all of you and wish you all the best for next 50 years. Thank you very much.