Delivered Extempore

ADDRESS BY SHRI K.R.  NARAYANAN, VICE-PRESIDENT OF INDIA, AT THE SEMINAR 'NATION BUILDING TECHNOLOGY AND TRAINING

SEPTEMBER 5, 1993

President of the Builders Association of India, Mr.  Kartikeyan, Shri Radhakrishnan, Union Minister of State, Shri Jagdish Tytler, Union Minister of State, Shri Thangabalu, Hon'ble Member of Parliament, my eloquent friend Mr. Kuppuswamy and other distinguished guests, ladies and gentleman,

First of all, I want to thank you for inviting me to inaugurate this very constructive All India Builders' convention.  You are the real builders of India in a literal sense.  You are the people, who build the millions of houses for our people, who build our roads, our bridges, our schools, our colleges, our universities, our great laboratories, the atomic reactors, the space stations, airports, ports and harbours, our great dams, our power stations, indeed all the tangible expressions of our constructive activities are in the hands of the builders of India.  This is, therefore, a very important occasion.  As we know, the building activity is one of the most developmental activities in our country.  The Five-Year Plans have allotted nearly 45 - 50% of their total outlays for constructive activities of one kind or another and 16% of our work force is employed in the construction industry. Apart from that, I understand that our construction activities extend beyond the shores of India to other countries.  Nearly half a million construction workers, are employed in the Gulf.  I understand, we have earned around 6000 crores of rupees in precious foreign exchange from our construction activities in West Asia.  Therefore I do not have to emphasise, particularly, the importance of this industry.
          
I am glad that you have chosen as the theme of this Convention "Nation Building Technology and Training".  We have had a magnificent construction technology in our past embodied in the great historical monuments we have inherited from the past.  Most of these technological know-how seems to have been lost.  While we acquire modern technologies in building it is important for us also to research into the past and recover some of the great know-how, our ancestors had in building techniques.  While we have been great builders, we have done even in modern times wonderful constructions.  I sometimes feel that today we lag the imagination and the spacious thinking of our forefathers while we build things.  Many of the things we build today even though very good in quality, may be because of the constraints of finance grow out of date within five or ten years.  There is not enough room for accommodating even the immediate future generation.  I feel that, it is important while we build today to think a little in the long term, a little about the requirements of the future and build in such a way that the constructions are suitable and are capable of accommodating the demands of the future generations also.
          
Another thing which strikes me and which is very appropriate to the theme of your convention is that most of the workers in the building industry are in the unorganised sector.  They are unskilled workers, they are migrant workers and a good number of them are women, and they go from place to place and they have no guarantee of minimum wages.  They have no guarantee of minimum welfare facilities.  It is, therefore, important to train them for construction activities throughout and also to provide them wages and facilities as the organised worker get in this country.  Since technology and training has been linked to nation building, one important aspect of nation building is to look after the people to give a good living to the people a secure employment to the people, minimum welfare facilities to the people.  I am glad that this convention is devoting time to think about this subject.  I do hope that you will bear in mind not only the engineers, not only the overseers and contractors but also the workers who form the bulk of our building activity.
          
Another thing which strikes my mind is the need for building homes for the people.  The Planning Commission has estimated that we have to build on an average until the beginning of the next century 6 million houses just to meet the demands of the backlog in housing problem that we face today.  So, it is a tremendous problem to provide, to build houses for our people and I think for this purpose we have to research not only into high technologies for building but also into the proper technologies for building, cheaper houses in millions for our ordinary people.  Already in several parts of India, technologies have been developed for this purpose.  Cheap technologies using local material and using durable material at the same time for houses for the people.  I think, may be I understand that some of these technologies are not popular with our contractors.  I think it is time that the contractors and the engineers adapt their thinking to the needs of our people for housing and shelter and utilise some of these technologies which have been developed not just in one part of India but in various parts of India so that cheap houses could be provided to the masses of our people.  For this purpose innovation is necessary.  In building houses, in construction for a country of such a vast climatic differences as that of India, it is important in thinking in local terms, in utilizing local materials, in building houses which would suit the local climate, and therefore, a bit of origional thinking, of a practical kind has to be done in order to solve the problem of housing for the people.  I do hope that in your discussions you will devote attention to this also.
         
I mentioned that we are earning a lot of money from abroad by our building activities.  If we wish to keep up and expand the building activity in foreign countries, we have to be competitive.  We have to have excellence as well as capacity to compete in terms of cost with other countries in order to obtain contract abroad.  New materials have to be developed.  New techniques and new processes have also to be adopted in order to live in this highly competitive world.  I know that the demands for Indian construction engineers, Indian skilled building workers, and also even unskilled building workers, are very great in West Asia, In Africa and even in South East Asian countries.  We have to exploit these big opportunities opening up in the world as a whole and therefore, your discussion on technology and training I hope will produce concrete results so that India can be a major builder not only in this country but abroad as well.
         
I welcome your venture.  I want to pay my tribute to the great engineers the great builders, the artisans, the workers we have produced who are giving jobs for our people, who are building houses and institutions, factories and great industrial establishments, for our people who are laying down the infrastructure for our future progress.  May I wish you all success, especially this Convention every success in their efforts to modernise, upgrade our technologies and to train our builders, artisans and workers. Thank you.  Jai Hind.