MSMEs Must Use Technology Responsibly: Pratap Sarangi

Minister of State for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises and Animal Husbandry, Dairying & Fisheries has stressed that technology should be used with a view to improve the life condition of poorest of the poor. The Minister inaugurated the workshop on Outreach of Emerging Technologies to MSMEs in New Delhi.

He said that technology is needed for production, preservation and marketing of products and coping up with new technologies is essential to compete in the global market. Our Prime Minister’s dream of making India a five trillion dollar economy can be achieved by growth of MSME’s through adopting new technologies.

He cautioned against over application of technology which sometimes goes against nature. Technology should be used to make better the life of poorest of poor, it should enhance the standard of living of the ‘have nots’.

The primary objective of this workshop is awareness generation and dissemination of knowledge about some of the emerging technologies, their applications, the kind of potential they offer, the impact they can have on the sector, challenges faced in adoption and some relevant models from around the world. The other aim is to chart a way forward for institution-institution collaboration to make the penetration of these technologies to the MSMEs faster and effective. For this purpose, the ministry has invited reputed dignitaries from different educational institutes like IIT Delhi, IISc Bengaluru, Department of Science and Technology etc., industry associations and different players operating in the market.

Secretary, Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Shri Arun Panda said that MSMEs should have access to and be able to adopt latest and new technologies and appealed to business associations to help MSMEs in technology upgradation and access to credit. Referring to Government of India’s efforts, he said that currently we are running 18 Tool rooms and 15 more tool rooms are under construction. Apart from them, 120 new Tool Rooms/Technology centres have been approved and these 153 centres when fully operational will train approximately eight lakh youngsters in various skills.

Development Commissioner, MSME Mr. Ram Mohan Mishra said that our country has many good Research Institutes, Technology Institutes and Scientific Labs and it is their pious duty to equip the small industries to provide and equip them with latest technologies to increase their production. He appealed the business associations to help small industries in this endeavour.

The MSME sector has been recognized globally as a major contributor to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The sector occupies a position of strategic importance, currently, there are over 60 million MSMEs across various industries that employs more than 111 million persons and produces more than 8000 products ranging from traditional to high-tech precision items. The manufacturing landscape is changing rapidly and there is a strong need for MSMEs to be agile and flexible to be able to survive this change. This workshop has been organized to meet these challenges.

In the day long workshop, Mr. Sunil Jha, IIT Delhi and many other experts demonstrated their presentation on Emerging Technologies like artificial intelligence, collaborative robots, smart sensing, real time dashboards etc. which can be very useful for the stakeholders.