The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee inaugurated the Twenty-seventh Indian Engineering Congress on the theme 'Engineering for Sustainable Development and Inclusive Growth: Vision 2025' today (December 14, 2012) at Vigyan Bhavan.

Speaking on the occasion, the President said to achieve truly sustainable growth, poverty eradication is of utmost importance. He said that poverty and a degraded environment are closely inter-related, especially where people depend for their livelihoods primarily on the natural resource base of their immediate environment. Removal of poverty is, therefore, a prerequisite for the protection of the environment, he said. He stated that appropriate climate-responsive technologies are, accordingly, required to provide relief to the economically weaker sections of society.

The President said mechanisms must be put in place to make available to developing countries the latest technologies at reasonable cost. Technology transfer must be informed by an understanding of its implications in the social, economic and environmental contexts of the recipient societies, he said. However, he added that where possible, existing local technologies must be upgraded and adapted to make them more efficient and useful.